By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
“Line Play”, the virtual world NHN Japan released in Japan in November and that integrates with chat app LINE, is now available worldwide. Over here, Line Play can be called a competitor to Ameba Pigg, the popular virtual world operated by CyberAgent on PCs and smartphones. NHN Japan...
Japanese business daily The Nikkei is reporting that GREE is to start a paid newsletter service called Magari as early as tomorrow (Tuesday, February 19). The newsletter will not focus on games but on Japanese celebrities: apparently, subscribers can expect original content in the form of text...
Big shake-up at Tokyo-based NHN Japan today: the LINE operator and Japanese subsidiary of Korean web powerhouse NHN is splitting up into 2 different companies. The basic idea is to separate the gaming from the web service business. NHN Japan says that going forward its gaming section will operate...
NHN Japan is continuing to turn its super-popular messenger app LINE into a platform (or portal) for mobile content of any kind. After games, a set of social networking features, horoscopes, a greeting card app, a drawing app, and a camera app, coupons, an in-app virtual world, and content for...
It took NHN Japan a bit longer than they wanted, but today it happened: super-popular messenger app LINE has passed the 100 million user mark (the original plan was to get there by the end of last year). The company was very clever in initiating a countdown marketing/PR campaign earlier this week...
DeNA just announced a “business alliance” with Mixi under which the Mobage operator and Japan’s biggest homegrown social network will share the same game development platform starting as early as January 2013. DeNA explains: Beginning January 2013, developers can create their...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry