By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
BDNA, the joint venture DeNA and Namco Bandai launched last year, has a new name and logo. The new name is BNDeNA (I don’t know which name is worse), and the new logo is pictured below. The joint venture hasn’t produced any game yet, but DeNA says that Macross SP Cross Deculture, a...
Walt Disney Japan is betting high on social games, and the company has chosen Mobage operator DeNA as their partner for development and distribution of Disney-themed titles worldwide. The two companies don’t lose time – at least in Japan: after releasing the first jointly developed...
Tokyo-based Shift is running a clever, so-called “software test marketing site” called Mintest that can best be described as a platform for social game makers to test titles and acquire the first users at the same time. For social game makers, Mintest serves as a way to get actual...
au Smart Pass, a service KDDI (Japan’s second largest mobile carrier with about 30 million subscribers) launched on March 1, is on the way to become a massive success. au Smart Pass is an app subscription service for KDDI’s Android users: for a monthly fee of 390 yen/US$4.70, the...
One Piece Grand Collection, currently the No. 2 game on Mobage, has crossed the 3 million user mark, maker Bandai Namco is reporting. The “social figure collection game” was launched in January. It took the title 5 days to rack up 1 million players in 4 days, and another million 17 days...
Nice win for DeNA and maker Square Enix: Final Fantasy Brigade, the first social game using IP from the super-popular console RPG series Final Fantasy, has racked up 2 million users on Mobage. Square Enix has come up with a weird campaign to commemorate the milestone: users can get a so...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry