By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
Mobage is getting another port of a hit console game: this time DeNA announced that Capcom will release BASARA Mobile, a social game version of its popular game series Sengoku Basara, on Mobage for Japanese feature phones. The game will go live in June, but DeNA says users can already pre-register...
GREE just announced that it gets another hit console game: Sega has decided to port Puyo Puyo, a classic puzzle to GREE for smartphones, namely as apps for the iPhone and Android. Dubbed “Puyo Puyo Fever Touch for GREE”, the game will contain only mild social elements, for example...
Twitter is huge in Japan, but CyberAgent thinks it has found a niche with Ameba tappie and Ameba tachy. Both services are free, were announced today and essentially offer the same function: they allow users to share “tweets” and communicate with a self-selected group of friends. Up to...
That was quick: GREE, which just acquired California-based mobile gaming platform OpenFeint for $104 million, uses its new property to expand to China. The partner GREE chose is Shanghai-based and NASDAQ-listed gaming company The9. In a nutshell, The9 will be offering a localized version of...
Smartphones are booming in Japan, and now CyberAgent has announced the “Ameba Smartphone Platform”, which will give developers access to an API to use communication channels Ameba users have, Ameba rankings, pictures posted on blogs etc. With the platform, CyberAgent (obviously) wants...
Facebook Japan now has 3.2 million users (3.19 million, to be more exact), if Facebook statistics aggregation service Socialbakers is to be believed. The last time I reported, 17 days ago, that number stood at just over 3 million: In that last report, I speculated about the existence of a glitch...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry