By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
US-based Pocket Gems has entered a partnership with GMO Gamecenter, Inc., a subsidiary of Japanese Internet powerhouse GMO Group (9449). The “America connection” here is that GMO Gamecenter in the US has been running the English-language Android game platform G-Gee since 2011 (there is...
DeNA‘s US company ngmoco recently laid off 30 people, TechCrunch and Inside Mobile Apps are reporting. According to TechCrunch, the group includes “senior leaders including a director of platform tech and the chief marketing officer”. The same blog is reporting that one game has...
DeNA‘s US subsidiary ngmoco has inked a deal with Germany-based mobile company net mobile AG (Japan’s biggest telco NTT Docomo holds a 80% stake in net mobile) to help Mobage enter more countries. The German company explains: net mobile AG will help place Mobage, DeNA Group’s...
It’s an old wisdom in the video game industry: platforms go nowhere without so-called “killer” titles. Mobage in English on Android has a few solid titles (that do well), but that killer game is missing. In the US, ngmoco is working on a bunch of new, original and Mobage exclusive...
DeNA and GMO Internet Group have announced the launch of a cloud computing service aimed at Japan-based social game developers that want to bring their games to international markets, especially the US. Both companies have started offering a similar service for the Japanese market as early as...
Another sign that Facebook Japan is becoming more and more visible: Tokyo-based Internet company GMO has raised (via their investment subsidiary GMO Venture Partners) a fund exclusively for startups working on e-commerce solutions on Facebook (“F-Commerce”). Initially, GMO is ready to...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry