By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
Another sign that Facebook Japan is becoming more and more visible: Tokyo-based Internet company GMO has raised (via their investment subsidiary GMO Venture Partners) a fund exclusively for startups working on e-commerce solutions on Facebook (“F-Commerce”). Initially, GMO is ready to...
Cell phone novels have been big in Japan for years, and GREE now has a dating simulation that’s been jointly developed by Tokyo-based social game maker Mobile Factory and Mahou no i-rando, a major Japanese cell phone novel site. Dubbed Watashi Senzoku, the game is mainly targeted at girls who...
Last year, CyberAgent (its investment subsidiary CyberAgent Ventures, to be more precise) launched Startups2010, a program that was supposed to identify promising tech startups in Japan (report on Asiajin – actually the company started in 2009). And now CyberAgent has announced it’s...
One of Japan’s most famous boy bands, 14-member all-male pop dance group Exile, served as an inspiration for a new social game that just landed on GREE. Dubbed Ex-Samurai Senzoku, the game lets players team up with a samurai (an Exile member in avatar form) and conquer towns in medieval Japan...
I like most of Gameloft’s games, and now the French company has launched a new title on Yahoo Mobage, the PC-based social gaming platform from DeNA and Yahoo Japan. As the name suggests, Eco-Farm is a farming simulation. Eco-Farm is the localized version of Green Farm, a social game Gameloft...
CyberAgent‘s gaming subsidiary CyberX today announced that one of its hit social games on Mixi, Hoshizora Bar Town (Starry Sky Bar Town), has made its way to GREE for Japanese feature phones. As the name suggests, Hoshizora Bar Town is a “bar management simulation”: players set up...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry