By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
I’ll say it again: if there is one mobile game out there right now that people in Japan will remember in 10 years, it’s Puzzle & Dragons. The game, which boasts 13 million registered users in this country (10% of the population), has generated US$113 million in sales in April. Since...
As I have mentioned earlier, Japan is the only country in the world where mobile games are regularly being advertised on television. And this isn’t about cheap night time slots in niche TV programs no one watches: DeNA, GREE, GungHo, and many other developers are paying for spots aired during...
DeNA has quietly shut down a total of five games on the Mobage platform in Japan recently, offering players who have purchased (but not yet used) virtual currency for the titles reimbursements. The list news site Social Game Info released today includes a few big titles, especially the first two:...
I was recently asked by Eric Seufert, marketing and mobile user acquisition specialist at Grey Area in Helsinki, to give an interview on Japan’s mobile and social gaming scene. Eric has an excellent blog, on which he analyzes various aspects of the mobile industry, most recently the gaming...
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...
I put together the following article for Social Casino Intelligence, the biggest publication covering the global social casino industry. The link to the online version of the original piece is here. The US$5 billion social gaming market in Japan is unique in many ways, but one of the most striking...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry