By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
Edit (May 5, 2012): It happened, the Japanese government is reported to be ready to crack down on social games. See here. Japan’s social gaming industry in general, and its current 800-pound gorilla GREE in particular, are getting a lot of bad press at the moment. Social games were never...
About two to three years ago, many people in the Japanese social gaming industry were in fear that the rapid adoption of smartphones in the local mobile market would break the entire business model of social games offered on feature phones. Fast forward to 2012, and the situation isn’t as bad...
A total of six top Japanese social game makers and platforms formed a council to self-regulate their monetization models, specifically with an eye on protecting younger players. The list includes: arch enemies GREE and DeNA Japan’s largest social network Mixi (which operates a social gaming...
It’s not only about “protecting” younger players and e-mail reminders when users hit a certain payment cap: GREE also announced a number of countermeasures against “real money trading”, a phenomenon that came to light when users started auctioning off rare virtual...
The gacha-gambling phenomenon, technical glitches, off-platform virtual item trading: Japan’s social gaming giants DeNA and GREE are probably not amused by recent reports in Japanese media, which triggered a discussion whether regulatory measures by the Japanese government are imminent. The...
Tokyo-based market research company looops is running a regular web TV show that focuses on different topics of Japan’s web industry each time. The show yesterday was about “the future of social games” in Japan and elsewhere. During the show, looops employee Kensuke Komura pulled...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry