By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
Surprise in Japan’s social gaming industry today: DeNA announced it plans to acquire a 20.03% stake in Tokyo-based Cygames, the company behind card battle game mega hit Rage Of Bahamut. The deal is scheduled to close next month. Mobage operator DeNA is ready to pay a whopping US$92 million (7...
That was quick: about three weeks after reaching 2 million downloads, Japan’s most successful platform-free social game Puzzle & Dragons crossed the 3 million mark. Puzzle & Dragons was released in the Japanese App Store in February this year and on Android in late September. The title...
DeNA released their financial report for Q2 FY2012 today, and in a nutshell, things are looking pretty good for the Mobage operator. The last quarter is the first in the history of the company in which sales topped 50 billion yen (50.3 billion yen/US$627 million). Operating profit stood at a...
It’s no exaggeration to say that the kompu gacha shock from May this year was the single biggest drawback in the history of the Japanese social gaming industry. There is a new concept to make money in Japanese social games in town, but I think it makes sense to look back at the usage of the...
Social card battle game hit Dark Summoner, created by Nagoya-based Ateam, is still going strong. After hitting 1 million downloads in July and 2 million in August, Ateam today announced their flagship title has crossed the 3 million user mark on October 30. Dark Summoner was launched worldwide...
What I have always found extremely weird about Mixi was that Japan’s biggest home-grown social networking site never offered a decent chat function. For years and years, they never seemed to care. But it seems that the meteoric rise of Facebook and chat app LINE in Japan has put so much...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry