KDDI Buys 5% Stake In GPS Game Provider Colopl For US$6.2 Million

Launched in Japan as early as 2005, “Colopl”, a simulation in which cell phone users manage a virtual colony, is probably one of the earliest geo-aware games out there. The namesake company made “Coloni-na Seikatsu Plus” (Colony-like Life) available to subscribers of NTT Docomo, SoftBank Mobile, and KDDI au. In the game, players collect a… Continue reading KDDI Buys 5% Stake In GPS Game Provider Colopl For US$6.2 Million

CyberAgent To Start iPhone Social Game Platform GameWave For North America And Global

CyberAgent announced today [J] the upcoming release of their new global iPhone social gaming platform GameWave. GameWave will be an iPhone only platform to be released by this spring as CyberAgent joins a growing list of Japanese social-gaming companies looking abroad for further growth potential. CyberAgent announced in their press release today that the GameWave platform… Continue reading CyberAgent To Start iPhone Social Game Platform GameWave For North America And Global

NHN Plans To Flood Japan With Smartphone Games

NHN Japan, the local arm of South Korean web giant NHN and operator of online gaming portal Hangame, is planning to seriously step up game development for smartphones, especially on Android. Japan’s biggest business daily, The Nikkei, is reporting that NHN in Korea has set up a 100-people team that’s supposed to create the titles,… Continue reading NHN Plans To Flood Japan With Smartphone Games

GTA Chinatown Wars Released On Japanese App Store As More Western Developers Use iPhone to Penetrate Insular Games Market

Yesterday, Rockstar Games released a fully localized version of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars on the Japanese app store as more Western game brands invest in localizing and releasing iPhone apps. This comes at an opportune time for many Western gaming brands – not only is the Japanese games market showing signs of becoming increasingly insular  on… Continue reading GTA Chinatown Wars Released On Japanese App Store As More Western Developers Use iPhone to Penetrate Insular Games Market

White Elephant From The Internet Bubble? Seven-yo Avatar SNS Is Shut Down

A Tokyo-based conglomerate of PC manufacturing and e-commerce retailing, MCJ(Mouse Computer Japan) announced it would shut down the company’s avatar SNS service Cafesta[J] at the end of this month. The service earns 600,000 unique users and 80 million pageviews in a month. Cafesta was launched by Powered.com (merged to KDDI in 2006), an ISP and… Continue reading White Elephant From The Internet Bubble? Seven-yo Avatar SNS Is Shut Down