By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
DeNA just announced a “business alliance” with Mixi under which the Mobage operator and Japan’s biggest homegrown social network will share the same game development platform starting as early as January 2013. DeNA explains: Beginning January 2013, developers can create their...
Coupons, horoscopes, social networking features, music, movies, maps, shopping, news, comics, games: NHN Japan is ready to throw everything they can think of at LINE‘s current 75 million users. It seems like NHN Japan is trying to see what will stick. And today the company announced it has...
This isn’t a big surprise actually: LINE operator NHN Japan just announced that puzzle game LINE Pop racked up 3 million downloads across iOS and Android and worldwide – in 24 hours. LINE Pop is one of the second batch of games using the platform’s social features and distribution...
The Nikkei recently ran an article in which Japan’s biggest business daily compared the operating profits of DeNA and GREE in a handy chart. The newspaper looked back at every quarter since July-September 2010, as both companies reported numbers for the last financial quarter (DeNA, GREE) a...
It’s a mystery to me why GREE, which has offices around the world and has no problem calling itself global, waited to publish its new financial report in English today – six days after releasing the original on November 14. There must be some “political” or PR/IR reasons for...
Square Enix announced “Chocobo No Chocotto Nouen”, a farming simulation that will be available on GREE for feature phones and smartphones by year-end. The biggest bullet point here is that the game uses Chocobo, a large bird that regularly appears in Final Fantasy RPGs (since the 1980s)...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry