By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
How are Mixi, Facebook Japan, GREE and DeNA (Mobage-town) doing at the moment? Here’s an interesting study released by MMD Research from Tokyo on Japan’s social games market. This graph shows how social networks are used in Japan (green: brand awareness, purple: actual users) This graph...
The biggest hit title on DeNA’s social gaming platform Mobage-town (Mobage) is Kaitou Royal. It’s rumored that this one game accounts for a big chunk of DeNA’s revenue and profits. Now TechCrunch Japan editor Ryuichi Nishida is reporting on Twitter that Takeshi Otsuka, the master...
As food and cuisine play an important part in Japanese culture and everyday life, there are many sites that resemble Yelp over here. According to a study by Nielsen NetRatings Japan from February 2010, the biggest, in terms of reach, is Tabelog () with 12.4%. Right behind that site is Gourmet...
In my opinion, a lot of Japanese startups fail on a global level because most of those that try aren’t serious enough about going global. And why should they be, at least initially? Japan has 100 million web/mobile users with high purchasing power, world-class technical infrastructure...
Here is the link to a column I wrote on augmented reality for the journal for the American Chamber Of Commerce in Japan. Excerpt: In the 1990s, computer-generated worlds in which people could completely immerse themselves were believed to be the next big thing in technology. But the concept of...
There have been various attempts at establishing a business social networking service in Japan in the past years, but none of these have taken off. In September 2007, LinkedIn inked a deal with Tokyo-based web company Digital Garage to bring the service to Japan, but that never happened (LinkedIn...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry