By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
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...
GREE has finally come out with a few details regarding that unified/global/mobile social gaming platform it plans to launch next year. The news item is actually so big that I decided to publish it on TechCrunch: Japan’s GREE To Challenge Facebook And Zynga As Global Social Gaming Platform In 2012...
One key reason why Japan’s social gaming platforms are so successful is frictionless payment. Both DeNA and GREE have put a lot of effort in optimizing this part of their business in the past, and now GREE made it even easier to pay for virtual goods. GREE users in Japan that don’t want...
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...
RockYou Asia won’t be called Rockyou Asia anymore: according to a report on Japanese news site Social Game Info, the US company renamed its Tokyo subsidiary to “Chocobot Games” (or “Choco Bot Games”, there is no English transcript yet). I have no idea why RockYou Asia...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry