By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
Japan’s social mobile games giant GREE is going more and more the smartphone way: GREE today announced the launch of an Android application. It follows the iPhone app GREE introduced back in August this year. GREE’s move is understandable: Both Android and the iPhone are rapidly gaining...
Big news from Japan’s mobile social gaming sector today: DeNA is under suspicion of breaking the country’s antitrust law. Authorities raided DeNA’s offices in Tokyo today: Tokyo-based mobile gaming heavyweight DeNA (current market cap: US$4.5 billion) was investigated by the Japan...
Dwango apparently thinks that its hit video platform Nico Nico Douga could also make money through social games. Starting today, the site will have a special section called Nico Nico Applications. Users can initially choose between 10 different titles, i.e. one from Bandai, one from Sega-Sammy, and...
DeNA today announced it is partnering up with CyberAgent and venture capital firm Japan Asia Investment (China) to invest $12 million in social gaming companies in China and Japan. Under the deal, DeNA will invest $6 million each in two venture capital funds: one will be run by CyberAgent Ventures...
Yahoo Mobage, the PC-based social gaming platform Yahoo Japan and DeNA (Mobage) jointly launched, is off to a good start: Nielsen Japan is reporting that in August 2010, before the integration of Yahoo Mobage into Yahoo Games, Yahoo saw 5.3 million UU per month. On September 21, Yahoo Mobage...
How are Mixi, Facebook Japan, GREE and DeNA (Mobage-town) doing at the moment? Here’s an interesting study released by MMD Research from Tokyo on Japan’s social games market. This graph shows how social networks are used in Japan (green: brand awareness, purple: actual users) This graph...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry