By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
Social media, mobile and the web in Japan is a field not too many people living outside this country have an understanding of. I am honored to moderate two Japan-related panels at this year’s SXSW event in Austin/Texas to help spread the word in the US and elsewhere. Specifically, I will be...
Will Cookpad win or Rakuten Recipe? Japanese A-list blogger Akky Akimoto has written an article worth reading on how Japan’s biggest sites for recipes are battling it out currently. It looks like Rakuten Recipe is on its way to overtake Cookpad, a company that’s listed at the Tokyo...
DeNA added two top social games from Mobage-town to Mobage on Android, beefing up its “Mobage.town For Smartphone” platform. Both games were developed by DeNA itself in Japan and are only available in Japanese. Sengoku Royal is a war themed role-playing that takes place in the middle...
Yahoo Mobage, Yahoo Japan’s and DeNA’s social game platform on the PC, is getting more and more games. One candidate for a future hit title isn’t a social game but a 3D virtual world called Pico Pico Town. Made by DeNA itself, Pico Pico Town went live today in beta. There are a total of 5...
Both DeNA (Mobage) and GREE had tremendous success in attracting users via TV commercial campaigns, and now Dwango is trying to do copy this formula with popular video sharing service Nico Nico Douga. Here are some of the TV commercials, for which Dwango hired J-Pop mega-star Gackt (and which are...
In December 2010, DeNA announced a spectacular deal with Samsung under which the handset maker will pre-install DeNA’s mobile social gaming platform Mobage on its Android phones. Today, Japanese news site Keitai Watch has pictures that show how Mobage will be presented to end users of Samsung...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry