By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
I could write a book or two about the differences between social gaming in Japan and elsewhere, but one easy and (hopefully) interesting way to take a high-level look at things is the difference in genres (with the biggest difference being that social gaming in Japan is mainly mobile). Generally...
The social gaming boom in Japan has helped Tokyo-based KLab to go IPO at the the “Mothers” section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange yesterday (3656). The company received the listing approval on August 23. On the first day of trading, Klab shares shot up from 1,700 yen up to 4,070 yen. On the second...
DeNA just announced that Sega, as the first domestic game maker, has started distributing titles on Mobage for the Chinese market. Sega launched one Android game in Chinese on Mobage today and is expected to follow up with three more titles next month. What’s interesting is that three of the...
DeNA‘s Kaito Royale isn’t only successful on Mobage, the company’s own platform. It’s also available – and very popular – on Mixi, Japan’s largest real identity social network. In fact, Gamebiz reports that the game hit 6,007,985 users today, at 11am JST...
Last month DeNA and Bandai Namco announced a social gaming joint venture called BDNA, which will be set up on October 3 in Tokyo. To recap, BDNA will be capitalized with 100 million yen (US$1.3 million), 75% owned by Bandai Namco, and led by a mixed team of Bandai Namco and DeNA executives. At the...
The Tokyo Game Show 2011 that I attended yesterday was was my 5th or 6th event, and this time, social games were as present as never before. That is, if you add GREE‘s gigantic booth (they occupied 1,080sqm or 10% of the entire floor space) to the handful (much smaller) startups that were...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry