By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
Rakuten is expected to acquire a stake in Tokyo-based ticket startup TicketStar, the Nikkei is reporting today. Next month, TicketStar will be issuing new shares Rakuten will buy. Rakuten Enterprise, a subsidiary that’s currently handling Rakuten’s ticket business, will be shut down and...
Sony Music Network Japan released Recotsuku on Mixi, a social game that lets player take on the role of a music label boss. The aim is to bring the company the company by finding and negotiating with bands, selling their songs, setting up record stores, etc. Other Mixi members can help in the...
Seattle-based gaming company Popcap has been active in Japan (through a Tokyo-based country manager) for quite a while now, but the company has just announced its first title to be actually released by its Tokyo office. In fact, Pop Tower, a puzzle game, is the first mobile social game Popcap as a...
Yahoo Mobage, the PC-based social gaming platform run by Yahoo Japan and DeNA (Mobage on mobile phones), passed the 4 million user mark on May 17. It took Yahoo Mobage 51 days to get to the first million members, 53 more days to add another one million, 61 days more to reach 3 million users, and...
Question: Who is the daily deal market leader in Japan? (on Quora.com) Answer: Piku is the first daily deal service in Japan (launched in April 2010), but it’s not the market leader. Groupon Japan is leading the local market, after Groupon bought Qpod, a Japanese clone in August 2010 (and...
When DeNA announced in December that Samsung will ship all of their future Android handsets worldwide with Mobage pre-installed, one country was excluded: Japan, DeNA’s home market. But now DeNA confirmed that Mobage will land on Samsung’s Android handsets distributed in Japan, too...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry