The World Online Gambling Law Report is organizing an event focusing on the global social gaming and social gambling industries next month. Named “Social Gaming 2013″, the event will take place on May 23 in London. (Please note that as stated on the conference’s website, the program is subject to change). Not too surprisingly, I…
The hype around Japan’s most popular mobile game Puzzle & Dragons, which is estimated to generate a mind-blowing US$62-86 million per month (or more) in sales, continues. According to maker GungHo, the RPG/puzzle hybrid now boasts 12 million registered players in Japan (the company doesn’t say how many users the game has abroad). It took…
According to data released by Tokyo-based game magazine publisher Enterbrain (published in business daily The Nikkei over the weekend), the Japanese market for video games grew 1.2% to US$4.6 billion in fiscal 2012 – which ended on March 31, 2013. Software sales contracted 1.2% to US$2.8 billion in that time frame. But hardware sales increased…
GREE is apparently close to releasing Lost In Stars, a 3D MMORPG that looks pretty awesome. The game has been in development at GREE Korea, which makes it difficult at the moment to obtain info in English or Japanese. One of the recently released images I copied and pasted below says “Coming Soon”, apparently within…
Tokyo-based smartphone game maker Pokelabo (acquired by GREE last year) has launched SWORD OF PHANTASIA in Japan yesterday, a social RPG for iOS (F2P download). Like a lot of Pokelabo’s recent games, Sword Of Phantasia isn’t a “simple” game but tries to appeal to “core” users with high production values, real-time battles, a skill and…
I was recently asked by Eric Seufert, marketing and mobile user acquisition specialist at Grey Area in Helsinki, to give an interview on Japan’s mobile and social gaming scene. Eric has an excellent blog, on which he analyzes various aspects of the mobile industry, most recently the gaming markets in China and South Korea. For…
There can be no discussion that in Japan, LINE is the king of chat apps at the moment. Maker NHN Japan, which now operates the service under a new company called LINE Corp., should be announcing 50 million domestic users very soon. If there is one competitor, it’s certainly Korean chat app KakaoTalk, which entered…
Here is a presentation I gave a few days ago in Tokyo on Japan’s social and mobile gaming industry. It’s dubbed “Social Games In Japan 2013: Status Quo, Trends And Internationalization”, and it covers exactly what the title suggests. (I need to add that nobody in the audience belonged to the gaming industry – everyone…