By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
CyberAgent announced World Chef today, a social restaurant simulation (in English) on Facebook (it’s actually already available here). The game essentially works like one of the many, many similar restaurant management games out there, but with one catch: it links to another CyberAgent...
What is GREE up to in the US, China and other places? GREE’s CFO and CEO of GREE International, Naoki Aoyagi, gave a very interesting (and pretty detailed) interview to US gaming site Gamasutra and answered this and other questions. It’s well worth the read. For example, Aoyagi says...
While I still think Gameloft has wasted money by releasing farming simulation Ecofarm in Japan (there are dozens of games like this in Japan’s social gaming market already), the company yesterday launched a far more promising title over here: N.O.V.A. Elite, a super-popular FPS already...
Video game maker Bandai Namco just announced another title to be added to its social games catalog: Kamen Rider Wars, based on the Japanese cult TV series Kamen Rider. The social card game will be released “this summer” exclusively on GREE. In the game, players follow one of the story...
GREE continues to go global: after announcing plans for offices in London, Singapore and Beijing back in March, the company today said it has established GREE Beijing, Inc. In China’s capital, GREE is close to local partner Tencent (the QQ operator) and to Shanghai-based and NASDAQ-listed...
I tried talking quite a few social gaming companies from the US and other places out of entering the Japanese market in recent months, simply because they didn’t have unique, defendable IP or other strong selling points for their games. Now even the biggest social gaming company of them all...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry