By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
DeNA has announced they have partnered up with Tokyo-based anime production company Aniplex to bring social games based on anime titles from the Aniplex catalog to Mobage users. The first title to be turned into a Mobage game is Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, an anime series that’s based...
Big news from DeNA today: Tomoko Namba, the founder, Representative Director, President and CEO, will be stepping down on June 25, after DeNA’s 13th annual shareholders meeting. Namba, who apparently plans to take care of a sick family member, will be replaced by the Mobage operator’s General...
Yahoo Mobage, the PC-based social gaming platform run by Yahoo Japan and DeNA (Mobage on mobile phones), passed the 4 million user mark on May 17. It took Yahoo Mobage 51 days to get to the first million members, 53 more days to add another one million, 61 days more to reach 3 million users, and...
When DeNA announced in December that Samsung will ship all of their future Android handsets worldwide with Mobage pre-installed, one country was excluded: Japan, DeNA’s home market. But now DeNA confirmed that Mobage will land on Samsung’s Android handsets distributed in Japan, too...
DeNA has, for the first time, bought a company in Europe. Amsterdam-based Rough Cookie, a social games maker DeNA’s ngmoco has been collaborating with since 2008, was acquired through an all-cash deal today. Rough Cookie follows the acquisitions of Icebreaker, Astro Ape, Gameview, and ngmoco...
DeNA not only launched the native Mobage app for Android today (see here), the company also announced (press release in Japanese) it will strengthen game engine support for 3rd party developers that want to release social games on Mobage for smartphones. DeNA says they will offer the Mobage SDK...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry