Japanese social gaming industry blog “Social Game Info” posted an interesting chart today. The overview sheds a light on the financial performance of Japan’s six listed third-party social game developers on a quarter-on-quarter basis. The companies are: Voltage (focuses on social dating simulations) Cave (GREE holds a stake in this company, which is known for plenty…
The “kompu gacha” (complete gacha) shock has come to a temporary “official” close today: Japan’s National Consumer Affairs Agency declared [PDF] that the mechanic found in many social games on GREE and DeNA‘s Mobage platform is illegal. I am not a legal expert (and the written statement the agency issued today doesn’t have an English translation),…
I am a hardcore user of Q&A service Quora where I just gave a detailed answer to this question: Will collectible cards game genre in mobile social games pick up in South East Asia? My answer: In Japan, by far the world’s biggest market for mobile social games, social card games (social card battle games…
Apart from gacha (and complete gacha in particular), real-money trading is another area for which Japan’s social gaming industry has been under fire in recent months. What is real-money trading? Real-money trading (RMT) describes a phenomenon under which virtual items are being sold for real money, usually off-platform. Most of the transactions are known to…
GREE caused quite a splash in Japan back in March when the company announced it made acclaimed video game maker Level-5 change from Mobage to their own platform, at least as far as social game development is concerned. (Level-5 started offering its first social game ever, Professor Layton Royale, on DeNA‘s platform in summer last year). A total…
Tanken Doliland, GREE‘s impossibly successful 1st-party social game, will be turned into an anime series on Japanese TV. Details are scarce at this point, but the show will have the same name as the social card battle game/RPG and be based on the Doliland world. Toei, the company behind the anime adaptation, already set up…
MapleStory, the super hit MMORPG from Korea, was the basis for a social game released on the Mobage platform back in October 2011, MapleStory: Bokura No Boken (“Our Adventures”). And now GREE is getting a MapleStory-based title too. Dubbed ”MapleStory – Brave Monsters”, the new game has nothing to do with the Mobage title. Nexon has teamed up with GREE and…
In case you were wondering when exactly GREE would open its globally integrated social gaming platform, GREE CEO Yoshikazu Tanaka just gave an answer – on Facebook. The platform was first announced back in December, with plans to launch it sometime between April and June this year. A few minutes ago, Tanaka updated his Facebook…