By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
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...
Back in September 2011, I first made my opinion public that both Mobage operator DeNA as well as GREE will not be able to replicate the tremendous success they have seen in Japan elsewhere, that Japan was unique. That was the time when both companies made a big push to bring their platforms into...
Japanese business daily The Nikkei recently published a story on the PS4 in which it showed a chart that compares the sales of social games with those of console games (hard- and software) in Japan since 2007/2008. I found it interesting enough to post it below. It visualizes the unbelievable...
The list of publicly traded mobile game developers in Japan is about to get longer: Tokyo-based Alt Plus got the approval to go IPO at the Tokyo Stock Exchange’s “Mothers” market for startup companies on Wednesday. Alt Plus will be listed under code 3672 on March 14. The company...
The Puzzle & Dragons hype in Japan continues: the country’s top smartphone game has crossed the 8 million-user mark on January 30, maker GungHo revealed yesterday. Even though Puzzle & Dragons is out in English on both on iOS and Android since last year, success abroad has been...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry