By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
How can Facebook Japan beat Mixi in Japan? It seems the Americans think one way is to differentiate themselves from Mixi is by urging users to register with their real names only. On Mixi, members are allowed to use nicknames and fake pictures on their profiles. Even though this makes it hard (and...
CyberAgent on Friday announced that its “Ameba Geinoujin-Yuumeijin” (“Ameba Talents-Celebrities”) blogging platform has hit the 9,000 user mark in January. This section on Ameba is exclusively available for bloggers “accredited” by CyberAgent as “stars”. Ameba Geinoujin...
How is Groupon Japan doing exactly? Daily coupon search service CP4U posted a study [JP, PDF] today, in which they analyzed the sales numbers of Groupon and a total of 146 Japanese clones in December 2010 and January 2011. The chart below (via Asiajin) shows that Groupon generated 1.1 billion yen...
CyberAgent today announced its main Internet platform, Ameba, is now counting a whopping 13 million members. In fact, Ameba hit this mark one month ago, on January 5. One factor driving growth for CyberAgent is the aggressive TV advertising campaign the company started in the fall of last year and...
Japan’s biggest social games company DeNA is to generate $1.3 billion in revenue this fiscal year: Japan’s leading social games company, DeNA (listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange with a $5.4 billion market cap), is running from one record to the other. The company, whose mobile social gaming...
First off, it’s important to understand that currently, social gaming in Japan largely means mobile social gaming. Second, it’s a multi-billion dollar market with mind-boggling profit rates for the biggest players involved. As such, many social gaming startups were created lately. You...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry