By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
The trend in Japan to port more and more social games from feature phones over to smartphones (and start with the hit games first) continues. CyberAgent recently brought Hoshizora Bar Town (Starry Sky Bar Town) to the App Store (free download), its popular cocktail bar simulation. The iPhone...
The smartphone revolution Japan is seeing can’t be ignored by Rakuten, the country’s biggest online mall. After having released a special shopping app for the iPhone in February, Rakuten just released a counterpart for Android. Rakuten says there are two things especially worth...
DeNA has partnered up with major Japanese TV station Fuji TV to develop a very special social game for Mobage: Ōoku is based on the TV show (a drama series) of the same name and which centers on the harem of Edo Castle, “the section where the women connected to the reigning Shogun...
How can you make it easier for users to pay for for virtual items? You make it easier for them to pay, and that’s what GREE just did. Players using GREE on Japanese feature phones can now pay via credit card. Even though credit cards aren’t as widely used in Japan as in the US, for...
What many people, especially those living outside Japan and those who never used GREE, don’t know is that GREE isn’t only about gaming. And the newest title, Gekkan Men, a (printed) photo book series that was just launched in Japan, is a case in point. Gekkan Men (Monthly Men) has been...
Nice win for DeNA in the US: the company won an award at the O’Reilly MySQL Conference & Expo 2011 that took place the day before yesterday in Santa Clara. To be more precise, DeNA won the O’Reilly MySQL Corporate Contributor of the Year 2011: DeNA is Japan’s biggest social...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry