By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
Edit (May 5, 2012): It happened, the Japanese government is reported to be ready to crack down on social games. See here. Japan’s social gaming industry in general, and its current 800-pound gorilla GREE in particular, are getting a lot of bad press at the moment. Social games were never...
Japan has another social game maker that went IPO at the Tokyo Stock Exchange: Ateam, a Nagoya-based company, got listed in the Mothers section (code: 3662) yesterday. As many domestic social gaming companies (i.e. Klab), Ateam didn’t start with a focus on these games: the company was founded...
When do you know a country’s gaming market has gone into overdrive? When a publisher goes and introduces a printed magazine entirely dedicated to social horse racing games (yes, those exist). Keiba Keita Game Collection (“Mobile Horse Racing Game Collection”), which is available...
Last week, DeNA and Disney inked a spectacular deal to co-develop and distribute mobile social games for the global market. The first title, Disney Party, went live on Mobage on March 30 – and it appears to be a big hit. The game reached 550,000 users in just 5 days after launch, racking up a...
About two to three years ago, many people in the Japanese social gaming industry were in fear that the rapid adoption of smartphones in the local mobile market would break the entire business model of social games offered on feature phones. Fast forward to 2012, and the situation isn’t as bad...
BDNA, the joint venture DeNA and Namco Bandai launched last year, has a new name and logo. The new name is BNDeNA (I don’t know which name is worse), and the new logo is pictured below. The joint venture hasn’t produced any game yet, but DeNA says that Macross SP Cross Deculture, a...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry