By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
With regulation possibly around the corner, that council six top Japanese social game makers and platforms formed last month has announced a first set of measures to react to the mounting criticism of the industry in Japanese media. The council consists of members...
As I expected, DeNA is introducing payment caps for virtual items in social games offered on Mobage for minors. The company is following competitor GREE, which has announced a very similar move last month. The background here is the mounting criticism in Japanese media (not by Japanese consumers...
That was quick: California-based Cie Games has decided to shut down Cie Games Japan, its Tokyo-based subsidiary, after about a year (the office over here was established on April 1, 2011). In fact, Gamebusiness.jp is reporting that the company was silently closed down on March 31. Cie Games Japan...
GREE‘s US subsidiary GREE International is trying to strengthen its position in North America: the San-Francisco based company has announced it bought a stake in IUGO, a mobile game maker from Vancouver. Terms and details of the deal weren’t disclosed, but GREE says it was a...
Tokyo-based social game maker gumi has started implementing its plan to go global: the company silently opened an office in South Korea on April 10. gumi is one of the biggest 3rd-party social game providers in Japan (and a GREE investee). In the English press release, gumi explains the first...
LINE, a smartphone messenger app made by NHN Japan, the Tokyo-based subsidiary of the Korean web powerhouse, continues to amaze. The app, which makes it possible for users to call or message each other for free, now boasts a whopping 30 million users – just after hitting 20 million last month...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry