{"id":2251,"date":"2009-02-13T05:39:56","date_gmt":"2009-02-12T20:39:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/2009\/02\/13\/shockwave-closes-japan-loses-one-of-its-biggest-casual-gaming-sites\/"},"modified":"2009-02-13T05:39:56","modified_gmt":"2009-02-12T20:39:56","slug":"shockwave-closes-japan-loses-one-of-its-biggest-casual-gaming-sites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/2009\/02\/shockwave-closes-japan-loses-one-of-its-biggest-casual-gaming-sites\/","title":{"rendered":"Shockwave closes, Japan loses one of its biggest casual gaming sites"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/img.asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/shockwave_logo.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-2250\" title=\"shockwave_logo\" src=\"http:\/\/img.asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/shockwave_logo.gif\" alt=\"shockwave_logo\" width=\"237\" height=\"90\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nJapan, the country of Nintendo, Sony and Sega, doesn&#8217;t have a decent casual gaming site anymore (<a href=\"http:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/2008\/01\/26\/hangame-japans-no-1-online-gaming-site\/\">Hangame<\/a> is big but doesn&#8217;t really count in this area). That&#8217;s what Timo Meyer, fellow German and founder of Tokyo-based gaming portal <a href=\"http:\/\/jp.wazap.com\/\">Wazap<\/a>, told me recently (Wazap has recently launched <a href=\"http:\/\/jp.wazap.com\/casual\/\">their own casual gaming section<\/a>).<br \/>\nThe reason:\u00a0On January 31, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shockwave.co.jp\/\">Shockwave Japan<\/a> closed, a hub for casual games and a subsidiary of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shockwave.com\">Shockwave<\/a>, a company owned by Viacom in the US. The Japanese site was majority owned by Tokyo-based <a href=\"http:\/\/www.trans-cosmos.co.jp\/e\/\">Transcosmos<\/a> and established as early as July 2000. It boasted 3.1 unique visitors and 55 million page views monthly in April 2008.<br \/>\nNo official reasons were given for the move on the Japanese site. A banner on the site simply says Shockwave Japan ceased to exist. But there are rumors about weak ad sales and an investment in a game that missed expectations.<br \/>\nClick on the link at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shockwave.co.jp\/\">very bottom of the Shockwave Japan<\/a> top page to view a short (and sad) animation on the company&#8217;s history (Japanese only).<br \/>\nVia <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.jp.wazap.com\/2009\/02\/09\/shockwavecom-shuts-down-japanese-site-bespite-31million-uv-and-55million-pvs-monthly\/\">Wazap Blog<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Japan, the country of Nintendo, Sony and Sega, doesn&#8217;t have a decent casual gaming site anymore (Hangame is big but doesn&#8217;t really count in this area). That&#8217;s what Timo Meyer, fellow German and founder of Tokyo-based gaming portal Wazap, told me recently (Wazap has recently launched their own casual gaming section). The reason:\u00a0On January 31,&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/2009\/02\/shockwave-closes-japan-loses-one-of-its-biggest-casual-gaming-sites\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Shockwave closes, Japan loses one of its biggest casual gaming sites<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9,17],"tags":[577],"class_list":["post-2251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-company","category-japan","tag-casual-gaming","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2251\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiajin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}