| Date | Title | Description |
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| Aug 6, 2017 | Why Japanese mobile sensation Monster Strike failed in North America | Mixi Inc.’s Monster Strike is a mobile juggernaut in Japan. It frequently ranks among the top-grossing mobile apps on both Android and iOS, boasts over 40 million downloads (in a nation of 127 million people), and it has spawned a devoted f... |
| Aug 6, 2017 | Why Japanese mobile sensation Monster Strike failed in North America | Did you miss a session from GamesBeat Summit 2022? All sessions are available to stream now. Learn more.
Mixi Inc.’s Monster Strike is a mobile juggernaut in Japan. It frequently ranks among the top-grossing mobile apps on both Android and ... |
| May 31, 2017 | Revenue, I choose you! The Pokémon Company’s profits jump by 2,500 percent | It’s been a banner year for The Pokémon Company: Pokémon GO was a global phenomenon and the latest full-on Pokégame for the 3DS sold very well indeed. One would expect the company to be doing well financially — perhaps even doubling or trip... |
| Jan 31, 2017 | Fire Emblem: Heroes is ready to put Nintendo into the free-to-play spotlight | Did you miss a session from GamesBeat Summit 2022? All sessions are available to stream now. Learn more.
Nintendo might be setting up its investors with a nice gift before the launch of the Switch console: Mobile money from what so far appe... |
| Sep 9, 2016 | Analyst: Super Mario Run could hit 1.5 billion total downloads on iOS and Android | Did you miss a session from GamesBeat Summit 2022? All sessions are available to stream now. Learn more.
Mario is going mobile, and the game may dominate the world.
Smartphone and tablet gamers could download Super Mario Run from the iOS an... |
| Sep 9, 2016 | Analyst: Super Mario Run could hit 1.5 billion total downloads on iOS and Android | Mario is going mobile, and the game may dominate the world.
Smartphone and tablet gamers could download Super Mario Run from the iOS and Android app markets 1.5 billion times throughout its lifetime, according to Kantan Games analyst Serkan... |
| May 4, 2016 | Western mobile gaming will grow to $30B, predicts Ngmoco founder Neil Young | Did you miss a session from GamesBeat Summit 2022? All sessions are available to stream now. Learn more.
Mobile gaming is on pace to generate $36.9 billion worldwide this year, but one of the people responsible for kicking off this industry... |
| Oct 29, 2015 | Nintendo's First Free-to-Play Mobile Game Is Not a Game | Nintendo finally unveiled its first free-to-play mobile game on Wednesday night, and it's probably not what you expected. It's not a greedy, match-3 game in the style of Candy Crush Saga, only with The Legend of Zelda rupees, or a Clash of ... |
| Sep 9, 2015 | Nintendo takes Pokémon into mobile gaming in partnership with Google Niantic | Did you miss a session from GamesBeat Summit 2022? All sessions are available to stream now. Learn more.
Now you gotta catch ’em all in the real world.
Nintendo is finally entering the mobile-gaming market with the launch of a new Pokémon g... |
| Aug 31, 2015 | Apple Is Cracking Down on Games with Serial Codes | On Saturday, Apple unceremoniously removed developer Mixi's Monster Strike from the Japanese iTunes App Store. It was the top mobile game in the country in terms of sales at the time. Neither Apple nor Mixi gave a detailed explanation for w... |
| Aug 29, 2015 | Japan’s top-grossing mobile game Monster Strike pulled from Apple’s App Store (Update: back up) | Did you miss a session from GamesBeat Summit 2022? All sessions are available to stream now. Learn more.
Update, 9 a.m. Pacific on Sunday, August 30: The game appears to be back on Apple’s App Store. Toto told VentureBeat he estimates the l... |
| Aug 29, 2015 | Japan’s top-grossing mobile game Monster Strike pulled from Apple’s App Store (Update: back up) | Update, 9 a.m. Pacific on Sunday, August 30: The game appears to be back on Apple’s App Store. Toto told VentureBeat he estimates the losses for Mixi to stand at about $600,000.
Apple has pulled Japan’s top-selling mobile game from its App ... |
| Aug 18, 2015 | Monster Strike makes a frightening $4.2M every day — while spending only a fraction on marketing | Did you miss a session from GamesBeat Summit 2022? All sessions are available to stream now. Learn more.
Japan’s mobile gaming market is huge, but just a few games take home a bulk of that spending. And one is making an extraordinary amount... |
| Aug 18, 2015 | Monster Strike makes a frightening $4.2M every day — while spending only a fraction on marketing | Japan’s mobile gaming market is huge, but just a few games take home a bulk of that spending. And one is making an extraordinary amount of cash on a daily basis.
Developer Mixi, which produces the Japanese megahit Monster Strike for iOS and... |
| Mar 17, 2015 | Nintendo on mobile ‘is an earthquake that will change the entire games industry’ | Did you miss a session from GamesBeat Summit 2022? All sessions are available to stream now. Learn more.
Nintendo caved.
Early this morning, publisher made the surprise announcement that it is partnering with mobile gaming company DeNA to p... |
| Mar 17, 2015 | What We Know About Nintendo’s Plans For Mobile Games | After an eternity of staying away, Nintendo has finally given in to the lure of mobile. The games giant partnered up with fellow Japanese outfit DeNA, a billion-dollar company that made its name with phone gaming, in a surprise alliance ann... |
| Aug 21, 2014 | Puzzle & Dragons developer sells its stake in Clash of Clans maker Supercell for $344M | Did you miss a session from GamesBeat Summit 2022? All sessions are available to stream now. Learn more.
Megapopular mobile strategy game Clash of Clans isn’t just making money for its developer, Supercell. It also just helped Puzzle & ... |
| Jul 31, 2014 | Puzzle & Dragons’ huge profit explains why Square Enix has 20 new mobile games in 2014 | Puzzle & Dragons has other developers eyeing GungHo’s wallet with envy.
GungHo Online Entertainment reported that it generated $918 million in revenues in the first half of 2014. That led to a massive profit of $523 million for the Japa... |
| Jun 9, 2014 | Salesforce and LINE: Ground-breaking mobile messaging partnership brings 1-1 marketing to life | Salesforce’s marketing cloud and the 450-million member mobile messaging platform LINE have announced a partnership at the Salesforce conference today in Tokyo, Japan.
But LINE is just the beginning. WhatsApp, Snapchat, and Facebook Messeng... |
| Mar 31, 2014 | Japan’s gaming industry generated $10.8B in 2013 — half of that was from smartphones | Japan’s game market is growing, but it has little to do with Nintendo, Sony, or Microsoft.
Smartphone games generated $5.4 billion in spending in Japan in 2013, according to market-intelligence firm CyberZ. That’s up from $3 billion in 2012... |
| Jan 27, 2014 | Nintendo May Go Mobile This Year (But Not In The Way We’d All Like) | OMG! Mario on iOS! Not! According to a brief in Japan’s Nikkei (translated by TC writer Serkan Toto), Nintendo will announce plans to use Android and iOS as marketing vehicles, allowing Link, Mario, and the various and sundry Pokemen to app... |
| Dec 6, 2013 | King is running TV commercials for Candy Crush in Japan, and they're working | Did you miss a session from GamesBeat Summit 2022? All sessions are available to stream now. Learn more.
Television doesn’t seem like the kind of place that a major mobile game producer would look to acquire new players, and that’s typicall... |
| Nov 11, 2013 | Messaging App Line Now Brings In Nearly $100M A Quarter, But No Official Word On An IPO | Line, the messaging app that blew up in Japan over the past two-and-a-half years, is now bringing in nearly $100 million in revenue a quarter.
The app, which is a subsidiary of its parent company Naver, said it brought in 9.9 billion yen ($... |
| Oct 24, 2013 | Messaging App Line To Go Public In 2014 On The Tokyo Exchange, Report Says | According to Nikkei, Line, a popular messaging and call service, intends to go public in 2014 on the Tokyo stock exchange. The company is expected to go public at a valuation between $8 billion and $10 billion USD.
According to Serkan Toto,... |
| Oct 3, 2013 | Social gaming company Gree offering buyouts to 200 employees | Struggling Japanese social gaming firm Gree is offering a “voluntary redundancy” plan to some of its employees, according to a document translated by market analyst Dr. Serkan Toto (via GamesIndustry International).
Gree is reportedly offer... |
| Jul 19, 2013 | Funding Daily: A boy's dream | Today, venture capitalists and angel investors indulged in the lighter side of life.
They placed their bets on babes, games, and manufacturing startups. Business software companies and social-good technologies are nowhere to be found on the... |
| Jul 10, 2013 | Gree making cuts internationally after sales slip | Did you miss a session from GamesBeat Summit 2022? All sessions are available to stream now. Learn more.
The once-booming social-gaming scene is starting to show some serious cracks. Zynga just had to appoint a new chief executive to restor... |
| Jul 8, 2013 | Japan’s Gaming Giant GREE Retrenches In Europe, Shuts Down All UK Operations | It’s not only Zynga feeling the pinch in the gaming world these days. GREE, the $1.8 billion Japanese mobile gaming giant, is downsizing once again, this time with a focus on Europe. TechCrunch has learned that the company is shutting down ... |
| Jun 23, 2013 | Advice From The Game Maker That Made GungHo Worth $14B: “Listen To Your Wife.” | One of the most absurd stories this year has been the rapid rise of Gung-Ho, the Japanese gaming company that saw its stock surge by more than 6,000% in a single year because of one hit mobile game called Puzzle & Dragons.
The company i... |
| Apr 7, 2013 | Dipping Deeper Into Publishing, Kabam Launches $50M Fund To Bring Japanese Games West | With Japan’s Puzzle & Dragons pulling in an astonishing $62 to 86 million in just the Japanese market last month, it’s no surprise that Western game developers are looking to cherry pick more hits to bring back to West.
Kabam, which is ... |
| Mar 31, 2013 | All Quiet On The Western Front: Gaming M&A May Be In A Lull As A New Generation Grows Up | When you step off the elevator into Kixeye’s new downtown San Francisco office, a guy in military fatigues has you sign an NDA. After you do (I didn’t), a receptionist with a lot of piercings takes your name, while The White Panda’s “Foolis... |
| Mar 28, 2013 | Hot Gaming Startup Supercell Is Closing A Round Above $100M At Valuation Around $800M | Supercell is a very quiet, humble mobile gaming company out of the very quiet and humble city of Helsinki, Finland. Unlike their brasher, Angry Birds-making brethren a 15-minute drive away in Espoo, they don’t like to talk much about anythi... |
| Mar 9, 2013 | What U.S. developers can glean from Asia’s mobile apps market | Asia’s mobile apps market can teach us a lot.
At the close of last year, the Pew Research Center found that 87 percent of U.S. adults (roughly 239 million) owned at least one mobile phone, and among those, 45 percent were smartphones. The c... |
| Mar 9, 2013 | What U.S. developers can glean from Asia’s mobile apps market | Did you miss a session from GamesBeat Summit 2022? All sessions are available to stream now. Learn more.
Asia’s mobile apps market can teach us a lot.
At the close of last year, the Pew Research Center found that 87 percent of U.S. adults (... |
| Feb 21, 2013 | How Long Can Nintendo Hold On As Spending On Mobile Games Surpasses Handheld Titles? | With Sony’s presser on the PlayStation 4 yesterday, it’s time to ask questions again about how console stalwarts like Sony and Nintendo are responding to an onslaught of Android and iOS devices that are cannibalizing their businesses.
Nowhe... |
| Feb 13, 2013 | Asian Gaming Giant Nexon Sees Revenues Climb 39% To $331.4M | Nexon, the freemium gaming company that went public around the time that Zynga did, saw its fourth-quarter revenues jump 39 percent to 30.9 billion Japanese yen ($331.4 million).
It still posted a net loss of 94 million yen ($1 million) bec... |
| Dec 21, 2012 | Zynga Confirms It Will Close Its Japan Operation At The End Of January As Consolidation Continues To Bite The Social Gaming Company | Social gaming giant Zynga has now confirmed that it will be closing down its Japan operation, as it continues to consolidate its operations and cut less profitable parts of its business. The spectre of pulling out of that market was first r... |
| Dec 21, 2012 | Zynga Japan will be closing its doors in January | Launched in 2010, the studio has become a victim of Zynga's need to consolidate after rough 2012
In October, right before the release of its third quarter numbers, Zynga CEO Mark Pincus sent a note to his employees, where he announced that ... |
| Nov 16, 2012 | DeNA CEO Moriyasu On Growth Outside of Japan: “Positive Results” But Not “Completely Happy” Yet | Even though they just bought a baseball team, The Yokohama Baystars, and have gleaming new offices in a skyscraper peering down on Tokyo’s famous Shibuya Crossing, DeNA still feels like it has so much to prove outside of Japan.
The $4.4 bil... |
| Nov 15, 2012 | Whill, The Electric Wheelchair Add-on, Takes Home TechCrunch Tokyo’s Grand Prize | WHILL TYPE-A
Bucking the trend of more software-centric winners at TechCrunch Disrupts in the U.S., a hardware startup named Whill took home TechCrunch Tokyo’s grand prize this week.
Whill, an electric add-on that wheelchair users can use t... |
| May 8, 2012 | Funzio Was Making $5M In Sales Per Month When It Sold To GREE For $210M | San Francisco-based mobile gaming startup Funzio had just come off making more than $5 million in sales per month when it sold to Japan’s GREE for $210 million last week. Profits may be another story, and there’s less visibility into that. ... |
| May 8, 2012 | GREE sales and income tripled in the last year | Latest aquistion Funzio is generating $5 million per month
GREE’s acquisition of Funzio is looking like a smarter decision by the day. As the Japanese government seems set to crack down on gaming practices, GREE's global platform will go a ... |
| Oct 13, 2011 | OpenFeint launches Game Channel to discover Android games | Did you miss a session from GamesBeat Summit 2022? All sessions are available to stream now. Learn more.
OpenFeint, the mobile social network division of Japan’s Gree, is announcing a Game Channel today that will help users discover new gam... |
| Oct 13, 2011 | Mobile social games firm Ngmoco hires chief marketing officer | Did you miss a session from GamesBeat Summit 2022? All sessions are available to stream now. Learn more.
Mobile social games firm Ngmoco has hired a former Mattel executive, Michael Staskin, as its chief marketing officer. His job will be t... |
| Jul 19, 2011 | Dentsu To – Exclusively – Sell Display Ads For Skype In Japan | Marketing and advertising giant Dentsu has inked a deal (PDF) with Skype to offer display ads in Japan. Under the terms of the agreement, Dentsu will serve as the exclusive display advertising partner for Skype in Japan as of July 2011, at ... |
| Jun 12, 2011 | Why Japan’s GREE Overpaid For Mobile Social Gaming Startup OpenFeint | Over the past year, there’s been an apparent trend taking place of Japanese gaming companies acquiring U.S. social game developers. DeNa bought social gaming company Ngmoco for $400 million last October, adding to an acquisition of mobile s... |
