By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
Here is the link to a column I wrote on Japan’s social games sector for the journal for the American Chamber Of Commerce in Japan, covering DeNA (Mobagetown), GREE, Zynga Japan and other things. Excerpt: The market valuation of Zynga, the San Francisco-based company behind Farmville and a host of...
Japan’s social mobile games giant GREE is going more and more the smartphone way: GREE today announced the launch of an Android application. It follows the iPhone app GREE introduced back in August this year. GREE’s move is understandable: Both Android and the iPhone are rapidly gaining...
Big news from Japan’s mobile social gaming sector today: DeNA is under suspicion of breaking the country’s antitrust law. Authorities raided DeNA’s offices in Tokyo today: Tokyo-based mobile gaming heavyweight DeNA (current market cap: US$4.5 billion) was investigated by the Japan...
Dwango apparently thinks that its hit video platform Nico Nico Douga could also make money through social games. Starting today, the site will have a special section called Nico Nico Applications. Users can initially choose between 10 different titles, i.e. one from Bandai, one from Sega-Sammy, and...
Facebook Japan has sure observed this: Japan’s biggest social network Mixi today announced it has removed the “Search Friends Via Email“ function – after one day. The reason: too many users protested against the new feature because of privacy and security reasons. Mixi now says...
Yahoo Japan just announced the opening of the so-called Yahoo Japan Application Platform (YAP). The company is asking third-party developers to provide applications, which could be anything from games to productivity apps. For Yahoo Japan, the app section means a new revenue stream, as the apps can...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry