By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
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...
It’s no secret that Konami is clearly the most successful of all video game makers in the Japanese social gaming market. Their flagship title, Dragon Collection, for example, just hit 6 million users on GREE. And now Konami announced that it now counts a whopping 20 million registered players...
LinkedIn surely faces an uphill battle in Japan, the country with the long list of business social networks that failed, but the company is trying. After rolling out a version with Japanese UI, establishing an office in Tokyo, and launching a special “navigation” service specifically...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry