Metal Gear Solid cards, Tokyo Game Show 2012
VS Media points out this morning that Metal Gear Solid: Social Ops, which was released just last week by GREE (TYO:3632) and Konami (NYSE:KNM), hit 100,000 downloads in the first two days after its release [1].
As we noted last week, MGS is a high-profile addition to GREE’s portfolio of games. And while I’m told that there are no immediate plans for an English version of Metal Gear Solid: Social Ops for GREE’s global platform just yet, it’s hard to imagine that such a prominent title would not be rolled out internationally if success in Japan were to continue.
Late last week there was news that GREE had cut 25 jobs from its platform business in the US, the first signs of growing pains in what has been a year of rapid growth and expansion into markets outside of Japan. Its aggressive push into the US hasn’t yet produced a runaway hit comparable to rival DeNA’s Rage of Bahamut (developed by Cygames).
It’s recently announced FY2013 Q1 financials were down — largely because of labor costs due to expansion — but the company says that its confident a recovery trend has already started. It will be interesting to see if GREE can finally get things rolling in 2013, and whether or not it can finally land that huge hit game abroad.
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Given the recent numbers put up by NHN Japan’s portfolio games, I’m inclined to be less impressed by this 100,000 figure. But NHN’s distribution method (via its Line chat app) is pretty exceptional, and so this might not be a fair comparison. ↩
