At a press conference in Tokyo today, Sony (6758) detailed its next attempt to move into the mobile gaming business. The big idea this time is to turn existing PlayStation IP into smartphone games, via a wholly owned subsidiary called Forwardworks. In my view, the 10 titles shown today can be...
Sony Sells Off All Of Their DeNA Shares Worth US$437 Million
Sony sure seems to be in need of a lot of cash at the moment. In the last few days and weeks, the company sold off: the Sony Building in New York for US$1.1 billion the Sony City Osaki Building in Tokyo for US$1.2 billion and a portion of its stake in online medical service subsidiary M3 Inc. for...
Sony Thinks About Using Free-To-Play Business Model For PlayStation Mobile [Social Games]
Ten days after changing the brand name of “PlayStation Suite” to “PlayStation Mobile” during the E3, Sony Computer Entertainment President Andrew House gave an interesting interview to Japanese business daily The Nikkei today. House said that the Android-based mobile game service will be...
Rakuten Cooperates With Sony And Others In E-Book Standard [E-Commerce]
Rakuten apparently believes in the future of e-books: the company announced they have reached an agreement with Sony, Panasonic, and major book retailer Kinokuniya to cooperate in the development of an industry standard for e-books in Japan. The goal is to do away with barriers that exist between...
Sony Music Releases Music Label Management Sim On Mixi [Social Games]
Sony Music Network Japan released Recotsuku on Mixi, a social game that lets player take on the role of a music label boss. The aim is to bring the company the company by finding and negotiating with bands, selling their songs, setting up record stores, etc. Other Mixi members can help in the...
JAPAN GAMING MARKET INTERVIEW
I was recently interviewed by Joseph Kim (who runs GameMakers and is also the CEO of mobile game studio Lila Games), Brian Peganoff (founder at Timber Advisors) and Matthew Kanterman (Director Of Research at Roundhill Investments) on the Japanese gaming market – with an extra dash of Korean...