By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
Japanese game industry data provider KADOKAWA ASCII Research Laboratories just published the top 10 grossing mobile games for Japan in CY2022. Here is the overview (gross sales, Japan domestic only, iOS and Android combined) – based on the company’s estimates*: 1) Monster Strike...
Foreign-made video games have always had a very hard time in Japan. For example, a Famitsu statistic summarizing the top 100 best-selling games in Japan between January 2001 and September 2013 (accumulated across these almost 13 years) does not include even a single foreign-made title. Almost 10...
There is a long, long list of mobile game companies from the “West” (mainly North America and Europe) that tried but failed entering the Japanese market via a local subsidiary over the last 10-15 years. The list of companies that left include powerhouses such as King, Rovio, Zynga (the...
While some of the big European and American game companies have expressed skepticism about Web3 gaming, scaled down ambitions or adopted a wait-and-see approach, things are very much different in Japan. (In that context, Japan is actually similar to South Korea (or Asia in general), but I will...
As every year, game industry news site GamesIndustry.biz asked several analysts for predictions about the global gaming market in 2023. Here is a repost from my contribution to their article: Prices will continue to rise Not all studios have hiked prices to keep up with the rise of production and...
It has been a very rare occurrence for a new mobile game in Japan to break into the top 10 grossing rankings (and to stay there, at least for a while) for a very, very long time now. I would say Japan’s last real “mega blockbuster” was Fate Grand Order by Aniplex, an RPG that...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry