By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
I think that this week is the busiest in Japan’s social gaming industry since May this year (when the kompu gacha shock hit), there is just so much going on. Today’s big news: GREE announced a comprehensive business partnership with Yahoo Japan, the country’s (by far) biggest web...
DeNA, GREE, KLab, Voltage, Index, A-team, Crooz… the list of publicly traded social gaming companies in Japan is about to get longer. Tokyo-based enish has announced it filed with the Tokyo Stock Exchange to go public at the Mothers section for startups on December 11 (ticker: 3667). The...
Surprise in Japan’s social gaming industry today: DeNA announced it plans to acquire a 20.03% stake in Tokyo-based Cygames, the company behind card battle game mega hit Rage Of Bahamut. The deal is scheduled to close next month. Mobage operator DeNA is ready to pay a whopping US$92 million (7...
That was quick: about three weeks after reaching 2 million downloads, Japan’s most successful platform-free social game Puzzle & Dragons crossed the 3 million mark. Puzzle & Dragons was released in the Japanese App Store in February this year and on Android in late September. The title...
Is Zynga following through on its announcement to “consider” closing the Tokyo office, after about 2 years of operation in Japan? It looks like it. Zynga Japan will shut down a total of three games on December 21 this year, namely its Pokemon-type social RPG Montopia, Mojitomo (Words...
DeNA released their financial report for Q2 FY2012 today, and in a nutshell, things are looking pretty good for the Mobage operator. The last quarter is the first in the history of the company in which sales topped 50 billion yen (50.3 billion yen/US$627 million). Operating profit stood at a...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry