By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
As I mentioned previously, the “kompu gacha” (complete gacha) shock isn’t over, even after the Japanese government officially clamped down on the controversial game mechanic. Over the weekend, GREE, DeNA, Mixi, NHN, CyberAgent, and Dwango (the same companies that formed a...
Earthquake in Japan’s social gaming industry today: a council of six major Japanese companies in this space today announced they will abolish the controversial “kompu gacha” (complete gacha) function from all of their titles by the end of May. No new games offering the mechanic...
As its Ameba-based social gaming platform is around the corner, CyberAgent sure needs some creative firepower to be able to develop as many games internally as possible. The company announced that it invested in Hoolai, a Beijing-based game developer that’s backed by Sequoia China, Greylock...
14-year old CyberAgent is close to a radical transformation of one its main pillars of business, the Ameba platform. Over the years, Ameba has transformed itself from a pure blogging platform on PCs and feature phones to a cross-service platform (using a single log-in approach) and successfully...
CyberAgent has been doing pretty well in recent months, and growth is continuing, especially in the company’s social gaming business unit. According to CyberAgent’s new financial report for its 2Q of fiscal 2012 (January to March this year), the company has been seeing “record...
Tokyo-based (and listed) KLab has announced it acquired Pikkle, a social gaming company established in 2005. Pikkle was led by Englishman David “DC” Collier who joins KLab to accelerate its international business. In 2009, Pikkle raised money from Mixi, CyberAgent, and a few other...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry