By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
Here is a calendar of major releases listed Japanese mobile game makers have announced for the coming months: the idea is to track what might be the next big hit in the industry from selected makers. Please note that for various reasons, I focus on native apps currently in production by publicly...
Mixi (2121) today announced that its action RPG “Monster Strike” has passed the 10 million downloads mark on iOS and Android on July 19. The number includes users from Japan and Taiwan: in February, Mixi closed a deal with Tencent to distribute Monster Strike in China, but the game is...
GREE (3632) yesterday announced the launch of a new studio called “Wright Flyer Studios”, a separate company that was incorporated in Tokyo in February . (Wright Flyer is the name of the world’s first powered aircraft.) The studio is headed by GREE executive Eiji Araki, a member...
CyberZ, a subsidiary of Toky0-based Internet conglomerate CyberAgent (4751), released a report on the size of the Japanese market for smartphone games today. According to the report, the domestic market was worth 546.8 billion yen (US$5.4 billion) in 2013, up from roughly US$3 billion in 2012...
One current trend to be observed Japan’s mobile gaming industry is that the era of the classic card battler genre is coming to an end. In its place, “classic” RPGs with a card battle and other social elements are starting to pop up as of late, often with impressive production...
Here is a presentation I gave a few days ago in Tokyo on Japan’s social and mobile gaming industry. It’s dubbed “Social Games In Japan 2013: Status Quo, Trends And Internationalization”, and it covers exactly what the title suggests. (I need to add that nobody in the...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry