By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
Advertising mobile games on television doesn’t sound intuitive at this point in time, given the immaturity of the mobile gaming industry, the now less important position of TV as a marketing channel, high production costs for ads, inability to track effectiveness, problems in attributing user...
King is continuing to take Japan seriously, it seems. The company started running an advertising campaign on Japanese TV for Candy Crush in December 2013, before setting up King Japan in Tokyo and launching a second TV ad campaign for the same game earlier this year. The simple reason: Japan is...
In October last year, GREE took the wraps off a high-budget, next-generation social game called Zettai Bouei Leviathan (Total Defense Leviathan). Back then, I mentioned that the graphics were being created by anime studio GONZO and that the title would feature the voices of professional anime voice...
Puzzle & Dragons, Japan’s top smartphone game, now counts 9 million users: the puzzle/RPG hybrid actually reached that milestone on February 18, just a few days after hitting 8 million downloads late last month. The chart below, compiled by Social Game Info, shows how Puzzle & Dragons grew...
One question a lot of people are asking me frequently is how and why the social gaming industry in Japan has exploded over the last few years. There are a quite a few reasons for the expansion of the business, and one of them is the usage of good old TV commercials. In sharp contrast to the US and...
Did you know that GREE and DeNA spend millions of US dollars to promote their social games on Japanese TV? In the July-September 2010 quarter, for example, both companies have invested around US$35 million each in TV advertising. GREE and DeNA were practically absent from the television advertising...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry