By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
“Line Play”, the virtual world NHN Japan released in Japan in November and that integrates with chat app LINE, is now available worldwide. Over here, Line Play can be called a competitor to Ameba Pigg, the popular virtual world operated by CyberAgent on PCs and smartphones. NHN Japan...
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...
GREE and Yahoo Japan have agreed to enter a joint venture dubbed “GxYz”, the two companies said today. I am guessing the “G” stands for GREE while the “Y” stands for Yahoo, but this name is terrible – in both Japanese and English (no wonder it’s...
Japanese business daily The Nikkei is reporting that GREE is to start a paid newsletter service called Magari as early as tomorrow (Tuesday, February 19). The newsletter will not focus on games but on Japanese celebrities: apparently, subscribers can expect original content in the form of text...
In July last year, Sega made a bold move to commit to developing games for mobile devices by setting up a subsidiary in Tokyo with over 200 employees. That subsidiary, Sega Networks, has taken over the parent company’s mobile game business, marketing Sonic 4 – Episode II or Kingdom...
GREE released its financial report for the second quarter of fiscal 2013, and in a nutshell, things aren’t looking too well. Year-on-year, the company saw sales dropping 5% to 39.407 billion yen (US$422 million) while operating profit plunged a brutal 37% to 14.285 billion yen (US$153...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry