By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
Following Zombie Jombie, GREE International has pushed out a second social game specifically geared towards a non-Japanese audience – and Alien Family, released on iOS in English (download), is doing pretty well. Just like Zombie Jombie, Alien Family has peaked at the No. 4 spot in the...
Walt Disney Japan is betting high on social games, and the company has chosen Mobage operator DeNA as their partner for development and distribution of Disney-themed titles worldwide. The two companies don’t lose time – at least in Japan: after releasing the first jointly developed...
How will GREE and DeNA (with Mobage) do outside Japan? That’s a key question for the future of these two companies – and one I tried to answer during a recent presentation I gave in Tokyo. Here’s the edited version of the slides (direct link to SlideShare): DeNA And GREE: My...
Tokyo-based Shift is running a clever, so-called “software test marketing site” called Mintest that can best be described as a platform for social game makers to test titles and acquire the first users at the same time. For social game makers, Mintest serves as a way to get actual...
au Smart Pass, a service KDDI (Japan’s second largest mobile carrier with about 30 million subscribers) launched on March 1, is on the way to become a massive success. au Smart Pass is an app subscription service for KDDI’s Android users: for a monthly fee of 390 yen/US$4.70, the...
AKB48 Stage Fighter, the social game based on Japanese pop sensation AKB48, has racked up two million users, GREE has announced. The social card battle game offers cards featuring different members of the mega-popular girl group. AKB48 Stage Fighter was launched last October and is available on...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry