Getting into bed with the enemy, GREE launches first game on KakaoTalk

Dr. Serkan Toto is a gaming expert and independent consultant based in Tokyo. You can follow him on Twitter and his blog. This article is republished with his permission.

If you can’t beat them, join them: that’s what GREE (TYO:3632) probably thought when it allowed its subsidiary in Seoul, GREE Korea, to use a competing platform for distribution of in-house content – a few months after the company’s own platform plans outside Japan were buried.

GREE has (very quietly) released Jumping Tail for Kakao on South Korea’s KakaoTalk platform (for iOS and Android) earlier this month. As far as I can see, the casual action title is only available in Korean at the moment. The game was developed entirely by GREE Korea, which was hit by layoffs in July.

KakaoTalk’s game platform (in its home market) is known to be hugely successful.

So how did the GREE title do in the first two to three weeks of release? App Annie reveals that Jumping Tail peaked on the top free app download ranking on iOS in Korea at number one and the top grossing ranking at 352. On Google Play, the game’s highest rank in the free download ranking in Korea was 12 (grossing: number 281). Since then, the title dropped off quite a bit in both rankings.

It’s unclear at this point if Jumping Tail will get an international version as well.

Jumping Tail is free for iOS and Android, but only in the South Korean app stores.

(Via Social Game Info)

(Editing by Steven Millward)