By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
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...
Social gaming juggernaut GREE (3632) has clearly been having trouble in recent months: the last financial quarter was pretty weak (by GREE’s standards), some once promising first-party games have been quietly closed over the summer, international business was cut down on, and the...
You could call it a clever marketing idea, total nonsense or a sign of how mature the Japanese social gaming industry is, but the day has come: Japan has a credit card that’s connected to a mobile gaming platform, as DeNA (2432) has released a Mobage credit card today. To be more precise, the...
It’s been quite a while since I last lost a word on dgame, the mobile social gaming platform NTT Docomo set up last December. But today, NTT Docomo announced a remarkable deal with Square Enix under which “Dragon Quest X for dgame” will come exclusively to the telco’s...
Five weeks ago, Japanese business daily The Nikkei ran a story according to which a total of 15 smartphone game makers in Japan are in the process of setting up a cross-promotion network. Under the service, the companies involved display ads for each other’s games, driving traffic to their...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry