By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
Anyone just vaguely familiar with social gaming in Japan knows that (almost) all users use mobile devices to play these games: GREE and Mobage are cell phone-only services. Most users live in the Tokyo area, and a lot of people play social games to kill time during their train commute to and from...
Edit (May 5, 2012): It happened, the Japanese government is reported to be ready to crack down on social games. See here. Japan’s social gaming industry in general, and its current 800-pound gorilla GREE in particular, are getting a lot of bad press at the moment. Social games were never...
Japan has another social game maker that went IPO at the Tokyo Stock Exchange: Ateam, a Nagoya-based company, got listed in the Mothers section (code: 3662) yesterday. As many domestic social gaming companies (i.e. Klab), Ateam didn’t start with a focus on these games: the company was founded...
When do you know a country’s gaming market has gone into overdrive? When a publisher goes and introduces a printed magazine entirely dedicated to social horse racing games (yes, those exist). Keiba Keita Game Collection (“Mobile Horse Racing Game Collection”), which is available...
Last week, DeNA and Disney inked a spectacular deal to co-develop and distribute mobile social games for the global market. The first title, Disney Party, went live on Mobage on March 30 – and it appears to be a big hit. The game reached 550,000 users in just 5 days after launch, racking up a...
About two to three years ago, many people in the Japanese social gaming industry were in fear that the rapid adoption of smartphones in the local mobile market would break the entire business model of social games offered on feature phones. Fast forward to 2012, and the situation isn’t as bad...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry