By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
Colopl (3668), the Tokyo-based company which I recently called “the biggest mobile game maker you never heard of”, is running from one milestone to the other. Last week, Colopl announced it has amassed a whopping 60 million registered users across its portfolio of games on iOS and...
Japan’s top smartphone game Puzzle & Dragons has arrived at 17 million users on July 22, maker GungHo (3765) has announced. The number only includes Japanese users, across the App Store, Google Play, and the Kindle. Just like earlier this month, when the game hit 16 million players, the number...
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...
There can be no discussion that in Japan, LINE is the king of chat apps at the moment. Maker NHN Japan, which now operates the service under a new company called LINE Corp., should be announcing 50 million domestic users very soon. If there is one competitor, it’s certainly Korean chat app...
Puzzle & Dragons, Japan’s top smartphone game with 8 million registered users across iOS and Android, is buzzing again in Japan. And what a buzz it is this time: I think it’s safe to say that the title is “making history” at the moment – on a global level. To...
AKB48 Stage Fighter, the first social game featuring Japanese girl group sensation AKB48 was released on GREE in October 2011 and went on to, partly fueled by TV advertising, become a big hit (it’s still popular today). And today Bandai Namco released the second AKB48-themed social game on...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry