By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
BDNA, the joint venture that Mobage operator DeNA (2432) and Namco Bandai (7832) launched in 2011 and that was rebranded to BNDeNA in 2012, is ending on March 31 this year. The news isn’t coming as a big surprise, for a few reasons. First, BNDeNA has released pretty solid games such as Gundam...
Social networking services in Japan never really put much emphasis on chatting for several reasons: even the biggest homegrown social network Mixi (2121) waited years before releasing such a feature in 2012. Mixi’s move was caused by the meteoric rise of LINE, and other social services...
Colopl (3668), the Tokyo-based company which I recently profiled as the biggest mobile game maker you never heard of, is on a roll. The stock has been going up and up as of late, making Colopl reach a staggering US$3.4 billion market cap today at the Tokyo Stock Exchange (it was even higher a few...
In today’s smartphone gaming world, GREE (3632) and Mobage operator DeNA (2432) have one thing in common: following numerous attempts, they both still have no big (first-party) app-based hit in their portfolio. As a reaction, during the last financial call, DeNA said it will pump out around...
Social gaming juggernaut GREE (3632) has clearly been having trouble in recent months: the last financial quarter was pretty weak (by GREE’s standards), some once promising first-party games have been quietly closed over the summer, international business was cut down on, and the...
Five weeks ago, Japanese business daily The Nikkei ran a story according to which a total of 15 smartphone game makers in Japan are in the process of setting up a cross-promotion network. Under the service, the companies involved display ads for each other’s games, driving traffic to their...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry