By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
While some of the big European and American game companies have expressed skepticism about Web3 gaming, scaled down ambitions or adopted a wait-and-see approach, things are very much different in Japan. (In that context, Japan is actually similar to South Korea (or Asia in general), but I will...
Even before establishing my consultancy Kantan Games, I have been active in the Japanese game industry since around 2008 – and a lot has happened since that time. Now, here is what I believe is one of the first comprehensive overviews in English on Japan’s blockchain gaming industry...
It was interesting to see that one of my publicly stated predictions for the game industry in 2022 generated so much buzz it actually started trending on global Twitter over the last days. International news coverage was crazy, too. The background: game industry news site GamesIndustry.biz asked...
Personal Background: I am a German national and have been based in Tokyo, Japan since 2004 – when I started my PhD studies at Keio University (as a research student). After graduating and working independently for years, I established Kantan Games Inc. in Tokyo in 2013, an independent game...
As everybody reading this text will know by now, Nintendo (7974) announced Super Mario Run for iOS earlier this week. Co-developed with partner DeNA (2432), the app is supposed to go live this December. Estimate Of Future Number Of Total Super Mario Run Downloads As Nintendo’s first actual...
Shortly after DeNA (2432) and GREE (3632) pioneered the concept of mobile gaming as the world knows it today (free-to-play business model, bite-sized content embedded in social networks to increase stickiness, data analysis to improve monetization, etc.) in 2006/2007 on feature phones, a flood of...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry