By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
After the soft launch of Rakuten Belanja in March, Japan’s biggest e-commerce company Rakuten has now officially opened Rakuten Belanja, their online B2B2C shopping mall in Indonesia. In partnership with PT Global Mediacom, the country’s ‘s largest media group, Rakuten Belanja...
Ameba operator CyberAgent has announced guppi, a free Twitter client for Android phones. The app incorporates all the usual features users would expect from a Twitter client, plus over 35 different backgrounds for the timeline and a special photo filter function (see below) CyberAgent says that...
Granted, this isn’t exactly a social game, but the title is important enough for GREE to issue a separate press release: “Hourface for GREE” is the GREE version of popular iPhone photo app Hourface. Just like that app, Hourface for GREE visualizes how the user’s face may...
More games for the Mobage for Smartphones platform: Tokyo-based Pokelabo (a major third-party social game developer in Japan) has announced Pokelabo Basketball on Mobage for Android. The game isn’t a separate app but can be downloaded via Mobage’s native Android app, which went live...
Major Japanese publisher Kadokawa and Nico Nico Douga operator Dwango are deepening a business alliance they entered in October 2010. The two companies have announced a capital alliance under which Kadokawa acquired 16,800 shares (8.48%) of Dwango for US$37.1 million. At the same time, Dwango...
GREE has announced it invested in video and social game maker HAND, which has developed a number of games published by major companies in Japan in recent years. Games developed include various Kingdom Hearts titles for the DS (published by Square Enix)or Puyo Puyo 7 for Wii and PSP (published by...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry