By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry

Tokyo-Based Mobile Game Maker Colopl To Get Listed Next Month [Social Games]

T

Just a few days after social gaming company enish, Tokyo-based Colopl has filed with the Tokyo Stock Exchange to go public at the Mothers section for startups.

Colopl will get listed on December 13 (ticker: 3668), two days after enish.

Colopl is actually a very interesting developer.

The company is most famous for having provided what is one of the world’s first location-aware mobile games, Colony Life (players are supposed to build up colonies by traveling between different places in the real world to acquire virtual currency and location-specific items).

Colony Life came to life as a service in May 2005, while incorporation took place as late as 2008.

Colopl was able to grow and monetize the user base over time until Japan’s No. 2 telco KDDI bought a 5% stake in 2011.

That deal put the company’s valuation at US$125 million. The startup then started pushing out a number of very successful social/GPS-based smartphone games to the App Store and Google Play, which made the application to go IPO possible.

Colopl made 2.9 billion yen (US$36.5 million) in revenue between Oct 2011 and June 2012, while profit reached 0.87 billion yen (US$11 million).

More about Colopl can be found (in English) here.

About the author

Dr. Serkan Toto

I am the CEO & Founder of Kantan Games Inc., an independent consultancy focused on Japan’s game industry.

Please feel free to connect via Email (Serkan at kantangames.com), LinkedIn or Twitter.

Please subscribe to updates on this site via Email.

By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry