By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
It’s hard to believe, but Tamagotchi, the handheld digital pet from Bandai, was launched in Japan way back in 1996. And to commemorate the 15th anniversary, Bandai Namco announced it will turn the pet-breeding concept into a mobile social game and distribute it exclusively on Mobage...
Bandai Namco announced today that their most successful social game, Gundam Royal, has hit 3 million users on Mobage. The cute “space action” game is based on Gundam, a super-popular Japanese anime series. Gundam Royal was launched on Mobage in December, meaning Bandai Namco needed 7...
The deal that Rakuten announced two weeks ago with Panasonic has been confirmed today: Japan’s biggest e-ecommerce company will be the first official e-book provider for Raboo, a new e-book reader that Panasonic will start selling in this country next month. Raboo is short for Rakuten Books:...
All companies developing for GREE on smartphones can now theoretically reach out to an additional 50 million customers: mobile community mig33 has today started providing the GREE platform for smartphone to developers (mig33, which is available on feature phones and Android is adopting...
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...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry