By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
Golgo 13, a Japanese cult manga from the 1960s, is getting the social game treatment. DeNA announced it has launched a social “battle RPG” of the same name on Mobage for Japanese feature phones yesterday. In the game, players are supposed to assemble a team of top agents and engage in...
DeNA is already active in China, one of their three self-defined core markets, but it looks like Chinese users will hear more from Mobage soon. The company today announced it has entered a strategic partnership with the Alibaba group, specifically Alibaba Cloud Computing (AliCloud). Under the deal...
After DeNA finally got the green light to buy professional baseball club Yokohama BayStars, the team unveiled the final name and a new logo (see below). What’s bad for DeNA is that the club isn’t called Mobage BayStars but DeNA BayStars – even though this was known before, the...
I am currently attending the Infinity Ventures Summit Fall 2011 in Kyoto, a two-day web/mobile/social gaming industry that takes place twice a year. During this invitation-only event (usually, only C-level executives from Japanese and international tech companies get to take part), one panel...
On November 21, GREE announced it filed a lawsuit against its rival DeNA, seeking damages of at least US$13 million. The claim: DeNA is pressuring third-party game developers into offering social games on Mobage only, leaving GREE out (background). DeNA now announced it has received papers from the...
I am giving presentations on Japan’s social gaming industry from time to time, anything from granular analyses of very specific topics to 101-style presentations. A few weeks ago, I prepared some slides on social games in Japan in general to shed light on a industry that’s very hard for...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry