By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
Social networking services in Japan never really put much emphasis on chatting for several reasons: even the biggest homegrown social network Mixi (2121) waited years before releasing such a feature in 2012. Mixi’s move was caused by the meteoric rise of LINE, and other social services...
GungHo Online Entertainment (3765), the company behind Japan’s biggest smartphone game Puzzle & Dragons, has published its financial report for Q3 (July-September 2013) yesterday. And things are not looking as good as last quarter (note: there are no English-language documents available). To be...
Mega-popular communication app LINE has come a long way since launch in summer 2011 in Japan, with many people speculating about a possible IPO coming soon. And now the cat is out of the bag, it seems: Japanese business daily The Nikkei is reporting on its website it learned LINE Corp., the company...
Colopl (3668), the Tokyo-based company which I recently profiled as the biggest mobile game maker you never heard of, is on a roll. The stock has been going up and up as of late, making Colopl reach a staggering US$3.4 billion market cap today at the Tokyo Stock Exchange (it was even higher a few...
Japan’s biggest smartphone game Puzzle & Dragons is now boasting over 20 million registered users in the country, maker GungHo Online Entertainment (3765) announced today. While this is a pretty impressive milestone, this chart from news site Social Game Info shows that growth is slowing...
In today’s smartphone gaming world, GREE (3632) and Mobage operator DeNA (2432) have one thing in common: following numerous attempts, they both still have no big (first-party) app-based hit in their portfolio. As a reaction, during the last financial call, DeNA said it will pump out around...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry