By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
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...
Mixi today announced it has redesigned Mixi Touch, its mobile site optimized for touch-control smartphones. This isn’t groundbreaking news, but fairly important for Mixi, whose smartphone offering has been growing quickly in recent months. The main change can be seen on the splash page, from...
Big news from DeNA today: just a few minutes ago, DeNA and Japan’s biggest mobile carrier NTT Docomo (58 million customers) announced a partnership that’s nothing short of spectacular. Starting next month, Mobage will be directly linked to Docomo’s i-mode mobile web portal for feature...
DeNA is gearing for up for the launch of an entirely new Mobage (that’s due out in the next few weeks). The company launched the first official Mobage Twitter account earlier today, which you can start following here. The account is Japanese only, but as Mobage will be positioned as a global...
The internationally popular anime and manga series Crayon Shin-chan is getting a social game treatment, courtesy of Mobage. It’s the first time Shin-chan, the hero of the series, appears in a social game. The way the game, dubbed Koi Suru 47, works is as outrageous as the anime: Shin-chan...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry