DeNA today announced it is partnering up with CyberAgent and venture capital firm Japan Asia Investment (China) to invest $12 million in social gaming companies in China and Japan. Under the deal, DeNA will invest $6 million each in two venture capital funds: one will be run by CyberAgent Ventures...
Japanese FTC Greenlights Yahoo Japan/Google Japan Search Deal
Good news for Yahoo Japan and Google Japan: The country’s Fair Trade Commission gave the green light to a proposed cooperation between Yahoo Japan and Google, stating that the deal wouldn’t “immediately” violate antitrust rules. In July this year, Yahoo Japan announced it...
Social Games: Yahoo Mobage Off To Good Start
Yahoo Mobage, the PC-based social gaming platform Yahoo Japan and DeNA (Mobage) jointly launched, is off to a good start: Nielsen Japan is reporting that in August 2010, before the integration of Yahoo Mobage into Yahoo Games, Yahoo saw 5.3 million UU per month. On September 21, Yahoo Mobage...
Report On Japan’s Social Gaming Market
How are Mixi, Facebook Japan, GREE and DeNA (Mobage-town) doing at the moment? Here’s an interesting study released by MMD Research from Tokyo on Japan’s social games market. This graph shows how social networks are used in Japan (green: brand awareness, purple: actual users) This graph...
DeNA: Kaitou Royal Creator Otsuka Moves To DeNA Global
The biggest hit title on DeNA’s social gaming platform Mobage-town (Mobage) is Kaitou Royal. It’s rumored that this one game accounts for a big chunk of DeNA’s revenue and profits. Now TechCrunch Japan editor Ryuichi Nishida is reporting on Twitter that Takeshi Otsuka, the master...
My answer on Quora to: “Is there a Japanese equivalent to Yelp?”
As food and cuisine play an important part in Japanese culture and everyday life, there are many sites that resemble Yelp over here. According to a study by Nielsen NetRatings Japan from February 2010, the biggest, in terms of reach, is Tabelog () with 12.4%. Right behind that site is Gourmet...