By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
Digital Garage, Twitter’s business partner in Japan (among others), has announced it will help LinkedIn enter the Japanese market. Details are scarce at this point (see below), but the partnership was actually announced four years ago. In fact, LinkedIn CEO Reid Hoffman has been a member of...
The Wall Street Journal Online posted an article on GREE’s CEO Yoshikazu Tanaka today. The piece offers nothing really new on the person or his company, but if you’re reading this, chances are you will find it’s well worth a quick read. It’s one of the relatively few...
Big news from DeNA today: Tomoko Namba, the founder, Representative Director, President and CEO, will be stepping down on June 25, after DeNA’s 13th annual shareholders meeting. Namba, who apparently plans to take care of a sick family member, will be replaced by the Mobage operator’s General...
Video game powerhouse Konami has added yet another social game to its line-up: Mori No Kuma House (Bear House In The Woods) was released on Mobage today, a title specifically designed for a female target audience (official website). The title is available exclusively on Mobage for Japanese feature...
Nico Nico Douga operator Dwango has decided to pull the plug on Ai Sp@ce, which is (as Wikipedia puts it) a “virtual 3D massively multiplayer online social game (MMOSG)”, on June 30, 2011. Dwango and a bunch of other Japanese companies started the virtual world in 2008 but never managed...
Rakuten is expected to acquire a stake in Tokyo-based ticket startup TicketStar, the Nikkei is reporting today. Next month, TicketStar will be issuing new shares Rakuten will buy. Rakuten Enterprise, a subsidiary that’s currently handling Rakuten’s ticket business, will be shut down and...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry