By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
It’s safe to call Japan’s biggest price comparison engine, Kakaku.com, an iconic web brand in this country. The company made $31 million in net profit in fiscal 2009 – that’s 11 times what it was generating when it went public in October 2003. What’s interesting is...
I reported yesterday about DeNA’s plans to consolidate its branding and call it social gaming platform Mobage-town just “Mobage” in Japan and elsewhere. DeNA employs 30 foreigners (out of a work force of 800 people) currently. And just now, I stumbled upon this interesting...
Japan’s biggest mobile carrier NTT Docomo has trouble attracting subscribers to BeeTV, its mobile TV broadcasting service. Growth has slowed down dramatically in recent months: Mobile TV is often cited as being a dream of the future in most markets, but it has been around in Japan, the...
DeNA just announced that it will rebrand its mobile social gaming platform Mobage-town to just “Mobage” from March 28. Mobage will also be the brand name for international markets. ngmoco’s plus+ community will be absorbed into Mobage from that day as well. At the same time, DeNA...
Did you know that GREE and DeNA spend millions of US dollars to promote their social games on Japanese TV? In the July-September 2010 quarter, for example, both companies have invested around US$35 million each in TV advertising. GREE and DeNA were practically absent from the television advertising...
Rakuten keeps hiring employees from China to drive its internationalization efforts, even though overall numbers are still low. Japan’s biggest e-commerce company added five Chinese students in fiscal 2009, another 15 more in 2010, and aims at adding an additional 15 this year. Most of...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry