By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
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...
GREE announced it has partnered up with Level-5 to bring a total of three social games from the Fukuoka-based company to their platform. Level-5 previously rolled out its first social game ever, Professor Layton Royale, on Mobage. The games will be released when GREE launches its globally unified...
One Piece Grand Collection, currently the No. 2 game on Mobage, has crossed the 3 million user mark, maker Bandai Namco is reporting. The “social figure collection game” was launched in January. It took the title 5 days to rack up 1 million players in 4 days, and another million 17 days...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry