By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
It’s no exaggeration to say that the kompu gacha shock from May this year was the single biggest drawback in the history of the Japanese social gaming industry. There is a new concept to make money in Japanese social games in town, but I think it makes sense to look back at the usage of the...
Social card battle game hit Dark Summoner, created by Nagoya-based Ateam, is still going strong. After hitting 1 million downloads in July and 2 million in August, Ateam today announced their flagship title has crossed the 3 million user mark on October 30. Dark Summoner was launched worldwide...
What I have always found extremely weird about Mixi was that Japan’s biggest home-grown social networking site never offered a decent chat function. For years and years, they never seemed to care. But it seems that the meteoric rise of Facebook and chat app LINE in Japan has put so much...
Konami’s biggest social game Dragon Collection is now counting 7 million registered users, the company announced today. The title is exclusively available on GREE. Dragon Collection was released on GREE on September 14, 2010, meaning it took 780 days to reach the 7 million user milestone. Dragon...
Zettai Bouei Leviathan, which roughly translates to “Total Defense Leviathan”, is the title of GREE‘s next big first-party game. Leviathan is a social card battle game set in a “parallel world” called Aquafol, which is threatened by evil aggressors. It was officially...
Following Nexon’s US$469 million acquisition of gloops earlier this month, Japan’s social gaming industry saw another spectacular exit today. GREE announced it plans to acquire Tokyo-based social game maker Pokelabo on October 30 – for a handsome US$173 million (13.8 billion yen)...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry