Category Archives: Social Games In Japan

Zettai Bouei Leviathan: An Early Look At GREE’s New First-Party Game [Social Games]

Zettai Bouei Leviathan, which roughly translates to “Total Defense Leviathan”, is the title of GREE‘s next big first-party game. Leviathan is a social card battle game set in a “parallel world” called Aquafol, which is threatened by evil aggressors. It was officially unveiled today. What’s special about GREE’s new title is that the back story was…

GREE Buys Tokyo-Based Social Game Maker Pokelabo For US$173 Million [Social Games]

Following Nexon’s US$469 million acquisition of gloops earlier this month, Japan’s social gaming industry saw another spectacular exit today. GREE announced it plans to acquire Tokyo-based social game maker Pokelabo on October 30 – for a handsome US$173 million (13.8 billion yen), in an all-cash deal. Founded in 2007, Pokelabo announced a capital partnership with Sega…

DeNA Teams Up With Yahoo Kimo To Bring Mobage Games To Taiwan [Social Games]

DeNA today announced it has teamed up with Yahoo Kimo to bring Mobage games to Taiwan (Yahoo Kimo is Yahoo’s brand name in that country). The company also says that it has made Mobage available in Traditional Chinese to reach users in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau. DeNA explains: As part of the partnership, Yahoo!Kimo has dedicated…

Zynga Japan Office Might Be Shutting Down Soon [Social Games]

Zynga went on a rampage yesterday and not only killed off over 100 jobs in the US but also “proposed” the closing of its offices in the UK and Japan (full story on TechCrunch). Here’s the part of the company’s official statement that’s related to Zynga’s office in Tokyo: We are closing the Zynga Boston…

“Final Fantasy” And “The World Ends With You” Are Coming To GREE [Social Games]

Big news for GREE: the company and Square Enix announced they will bring two of its biggest gaming franchises to the GREE platform, namely Final Fantasy and The World Ends With You. The bigger one first: “Final Fantasy x GREE” is the tentative title of the first Final Fantasy game to hit GREE. Final Fantasy Brigade,…

LINE Envy: DeNA Introduces Chat App “comm” For iOS And Android [Social Networks]

In a somewhat surprising move, DeNA announced “comm” today, a new voice call and chat app for iOS and Android. The app is available worldwide, for free, and in English and Japanese. To make a long story short, comm is a LINE clone. DeNA’s app offers not only the same core functions, it copies LINE’s killer…

Puzzle & Dragons Reaches 2 Million Downloads [Social Games]

Japan’s most successful platform-free social game Puzzle & Dragons continues to amaze. Maker GungHo announced that their flagship title has reached 2 million downloads – in Japan only, on iOS and Android only (there is no feature phone version), and without using the Mobage or GREE networks. Puzzle & Dragons was released in the Japanese App Store in February and on Android in late September. The…

To Go Against LINE: Yahoo Japan Teams Up With Kakao Talk [Social Networks]

Messenger app sensation Kakao Talk is the clear winner in its home market of Korea (65 million users worldwide) but hasn’t been able to win over users in Japan where LINE is the undisputed king. Kakao Talk has been available in Japanese for quite a while now, but now maker Kakao Corp. is ready to take…