By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
LINE, NHN Japan’s super-popular social app, is getting another push in Japan. KDDI, the country’s second largest mobile carrier (around 35 million customers), announced it will take LINE into its so-called “au Smart Pass” service. That service makes it possible for...
I have been admiring the work of Hideo Kojima, the designer behind hit video game franchise Metal Gear, for years. And today, during an event in Tokyo to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the action-adventure series, Kojima took the stage with GREE CEO Yoshikazu Tanaka to announce the first social...
Social RPG “Guilty Dragon”, social shooting game “Macross SP Deculture” and social RPG “Valkyries In The Twilight”: the list of what DeNA calls next-generation games for Mobage is getting longer. Yesterday the company released yet another title that’s being...
GREE is actively exploring new fields of business as of late: just a few days after announcing a new subsidiary for merchandise based on GREE IP, the company today says it’s planning to expand to TV content, too. As you’d might expect, TV in this case means mobile TV, or mobile social...
The puzzle RPGs are coming: Puzzle & Dragons, the super-popular social RPG from Tokyo-based GungHo, is getting some competition from a similar game called Sengoku Puzzle!! Animal Daikassen (“Warring States Puzzle!! Big Battle Of The Animals”). Osaka-based Racjin was clearly inspired...
In a new interview with Pocketgamer.biz, GREE International CEO (and GREE proper’s CFO) Naoki Aoyagi gave out the goal to generate 10% of all of his company’s sales outside Japan next year. Here is my recent analysis of GREE’s financial performance in the US so far. The 10% goal...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry