By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
Mobage and GREE may have well over 25 million users in Japan each, but that doesn’t stop Forif to try to become another mobile social gaming platform provider in the country. The Tokyo-based company, which was established in 2007, just launched a mobile social gaming service called Joynt...
GREE is again preparing to take legal action against DeNA, following a lawsuit from September 2009 (when GREE accused its competitor of copying one of their hit games). This time, GREE says DeNA is blocking access to games made by third-party developers. The accusation isn’t really new: in...
What do you do when you’re a Japanese social game company with 30 million users, have been running TV ads for years, sit on US$728 million pre-tax profit from last fiscal and need to widen your member base? You try to buy a pro baseball team, just like DeNA. The Nikkei reported Tuesday that...
Walt Disney Japan has seen some decent success after launching their first social game, Disney My Land, on Mobage in April this year (the title has constantly been on Mobage‘s top 20 games since). In case you didn’t know, Disney has huge brand power in Japan. While the theme park...
“Dainekkyo!! Pro Yakyu Card”, a social baseball card game made by Tokyo-based social game maker GMS (recently named gloops), now has 1.5 million registered users on Mobage. The English title of the game is “Japan Pro Baseball Card Battle”. It’s available on both Mobage for feature...
Japan’s social gaming industry is maturing and continues to mix with the video gaming sector: Sega has announced it has entered a capital tie-up and that it will jointly develop social games with Tokyo-based startup Pokelabo. Details are scarce (financials, for example, weren’t...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry