By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
Canceled games, ousted star designers, exposed (bad) work conditions: Konami (9766) has not really been producing good news since it announced restructuring efforts around spring this year. And in about two weeks, starting from September 10, Konami Digital Entertainment will close a total of 31...
As I have mentioned earlier, Japan is the only country in the world where mobile games are regularly being advertised on television. And this isn’t about cheap night time slots in niche TV programs no one watches: DeNA, GREE, GungHo, and many other developers are paying for spots aired during...
I put together the following article for Social Casino Intelligence, the biggest publication covering the global social casino industry. The link to the online version of the original piece is here. The US$5 billion social gaming market in Japan is unique in many ways, but one of the most striking...
In Japan, a title called “Kaito Royale” is often credited with having kick-started the social gaming boom in this country as a whole. The first-party game – which works much like Mafia Wars – from DeNA was launched on Mobage in October 2009, and is still very, very popular...
GREE didn’t have a good last financial quarter, mainly because of a lack of strong games (that talk about kompu gacha shock after-effects, for example, is total nonsense). As a consequence, even Puzzle & Dragons maker GungHo is now worth more in terms of market cap. But some recent...
Back in September 2011, I first made my opinion public that both Mobage operator DeNA as well as GREE will not be able to replicate the tremendous success they have seen in Japan elsewhere, that Japan was unique. That was the time when both companies made a big push to bring their platforms into...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry