Social game development in Japan is primarily based on two mobile platforms: GREE and Mobage. In this article, we will introduce the development and changes that has taken place in the market with the greatist hit titles.
Japan's mobile application market is huge and said to have unique characteristics. In a presentation at last month’s Casual Connect Seattle, a convention for the casual gaming industry, the application analytics provider AppAnnie presented a wealth of data about the application markets in many different countries. We investigate these data to get a global perspective on the specific characteristics of the Japanese application market.
You might have heard of the name Gree and DeNA, companies running two monopolistic social gaming platforms, GREE and Mobage. Gree became widely known for buying out Openfeint and Funzio, and recently opening its international GREE Platform. Meanwhile DeNA acquired ngmoco and recently released "Rage of Bahamut" in the U.S. which ranked in top of the grossing chart in both Apple App Store and Google Play.
But how about LINE? -Well, this is the name of the instant messaging app that has a great impact which might be a threat to Facebook and GREE as a gaming platform.