By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
Japan’s top messenger app LINE (160 million users worldwide and counting) is taking it very slow with its in-app gaming platform. Even though the first LINE-powered titles were rolled out in summer last year, the total number of such games available is still below 30. LINE Corp. CEO Morikawa...
The number isn’t impressive as Konami’s, but Tecmo Koei is now counting a total of five million registered players for their social games offered on GREE, Mobage, and Yahoo Mobage. The “traditional” video game maker is seeing a 27% profit margin in the online and mobile...
While some of the big European and American game companies have expressed skepticism about Web3 gaming, scaled down ambitions or adopted a wait-and-see approach, things are very much different in Japan. (In that context, Japan is actually similar to South Korea (or Asia in general), but I will...
The current discussion around the proposed payment for voice actress Hellena Taylor for working on Bayonetta 3 in the West has given me the idea to provide an overview of the salary situation in Japan’s game industry. Quick background:In 2019, I acquired a recruiting license (the business is...
Even before establishing my consultancy Kantan Games, I have been active in the Japanese game industry since around 2008 – and a lot has happened since that time. Now, here is what I believe is one of the first comprehensive overviews in English on Japan’s blockchain gaming industry...
Shortly after DeNA (2432) and GREE (3632) pioneered the concept of mobile gaming as the world knows it today (free-to-play business model, bite-sized content embedded in social networks to increase stickiness, data analysis to improve monetization, etc.) in 2006/2007 on feature phones, a flood of...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry