By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
Mega-popular chat app LINE is getting three new games, after NHN Japan launched five new titles just a few weeks ago. Needless to say, all of these are F2P and connect with LINE, i.e. allowing you to invite your friends from within the games. The three games are all “casual” and have...
This is a great PR move by GREE: the company today announced it will support “Tokyo 2020”, Japan’s bid to host the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games. GREE and official bid partner Yahoo Japan will jointly sponsor a promotional campaign that will be started nation-wide on December...
Mega-popular card battle game Rage Of Bahamut has passed the 10 million user mark, maker Cygames announced today. The company reported 3 million users for their flagship titles just 3 months ago – in other words, users are going totally nuts over the Mobage game. In Korea alone Rage Of...
Zynga Japan will close its office in Tokyo at the end of next month, CEO Kenji Matsubara posted on Facebook today. The move was (kind of) pre-announced back in October by Zynga proper’s CEO Mark Pincus. One month later, Zynga Japan said it will stop supporting three games by today. Here is...
I can’t say this is a big surprise: GREE has just launched its own messenger app on the App Store and Google Play – very, very quietly. Aptly named GREE Messenger, the app is limited for download in a few countries for this soft launch. On iOS, for example, it’s available in the...
The following charts are part of a presentation I recently gave on Japan’s social gaming industry, highlighting the differences between GREE, Zynga, and Mobage operator DeNA in terms of financials. What many people outside Japan don’t realize is that when it comes to business, both...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry