By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
It seems Rakuten‘s drive towards internationalization is continuing. CEO Hiroshi Mikitani said in an interview with Japanese newspaper Mainichi that: he wants to see Rakuten grow its international business ten-fold in 15 years Rakuten will open their online mall Rakuten Ichiba in four...
Localizing social games for different parts of the world is a big challenge, especially for Japan-based game makers. And now GREE announced they have partnered up with a total of 6 companies to assist providers of social games in this process. These developers can expect help with localizing games...
Japan’s Consumer Affairs Agency issued a “recommendation” to Groupon Japan on Tuesday, basically telling the company to reconsider the way deals are presented to customers. A spokesman for the agency said they consider the complaints from Japanese customers about Groupon as...
Rakuten today announced that its US company Buy.com (acquired in May last year) launched a special site that makes it possible for the 2,500 merchants registered on Buy.com to ship goods to Japanese customers. Users with a Rakuten ID can buy products on Buy.com, from the US, using the same ID as in...
GREE today announced the launch of a new potential hit game: “Ryuu Ga Gotoku Mobile” is the name of the social game version of Ryuu Ga Gotoku, a famous action-adventure series that started in 2005 on the Sony PS2. The video game version is known as “Yakuza” in the US and...
Just a few weeks ago, Groupon Japan took a serious beating when the company disappointed customers with a botched deal during the New Year. The incident made its way into Japanese mass media (including TV), made Groupon CEO Andrew Mason apologize to his customers in Japan and caused a dent in the...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry