By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
As a private company, there is no need for The Pokemon Company to disclose financials every quarter – or to ever discuss any of their numbers publicly. In Japan, however, a lot of private companies that are structured in a certain way communicate some financials (not all) in the...
Tokyo-based market research firm Yano has published a new report on Japan’s smartphone game industry. According to the company, the size of the industry is stagnating from 2014 to 2017 within the US$8-8.5 billion band: The numbers include sales generated inside smartphone native apps as well...
There can be no doubt Japanese companies lead the world when it comes to understanding that free-to-play mobile games are actually services that never end. As such, live operations are viewed as a key activity in the mobile game industry’s value chain and taken very seriously over here. For...
Today, Japan’s biggest video game magazine Famitsu published (JP) new stats showing that the country’s market for console gaming continues to shrink. According to Famitsu, the combined sales in Japan for video game hard- and software amounted to US$2.59 billion between December 28, 2015...
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...
Facebook has launched Instant Games yesterday, a new HTML5 cross-platform that could lead to a new era in gaming. In a nutshell, Facebook allows developers to deploy games that run completely within the Facebook and Messenger clients (both on mobile and desktop). One tap of the user is enough, and...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry