Indonesian online real estate marketplace UrbanIndo has concluded a series A financing round led by Japan-based GREE Ventures. IMJ Fenox, a new fund focusing on Southeast Asia markets has also participated. The sum of the financing round wasn’t disclosed. Prior to this financing round, UrbanIndo has also previously raised a round from East Ventures (1) and other undisclosed angel investors.

Arip Tirta, Co-founder and CEO of UrbanIndo said in today’s announcement:

UrbanIndo has experienced rapid growth. The online real estate marketplace in Indonesia is shifting as users rely more and more on market data and tools to make the right decision in buying, renting, or selling properties.

This fresh funding will be used to hire more talent to join the team which currently has 11 people. Founded in November 2011, UrbanIndo claims to be “the most innovative real estate search in Indonesia.” It simplifies the search process by allowing its users to query directly on a map, complete with features like neighborhood reports, similar properties, and price distribution analysis of a neighborhood within a specific listing. Other competitors in Indonesia include Rumah123 and PropertyGuru’s Rumah.com.

When questioned, Arip told us that UrbanIndo currently has over 17,000 registered users with the majority of them being real estate professionals. The site has sold or rented close to 9,000 properties. There are also 75,000 active property listings. He also revealed that visits and pageviews have increased by 20 percent per month but did not share absolute figures. Moving forward, UrbanIndo plans to monetize based on the lead generation platform for professionals property agents.

The last time we saw GREE Ventures take a big interest in an Indonesian startup, it was Berrybenka, the women’s fashion e-commerce store, that got series A funding of its own.

(1) Disclosure: East Ventures is also an investor in TechinAsia. See our ethics page for more information.

A week later, that question remains unanswered, as GREE’s proposed settlement has left many employees unsatisfied. One worker told the Beijing Times that part of the problem is that many employees put in massive amounts of overtime with the expectation that this dedication would be rewarded in the long run, and that GREE’s compensation plan doesn’t account for that. But a company spokesman told the paper that dissatisfied employees were a small minority of the total staff at GREE China.

But the real trouble for GREE from a PR perspective is that one of the laid-off employees is eight months pregnant. According to her, the loss of her job means the loss of access to pregnancy insurance she’s been paying into for ten years in addition to a maternity leave allowance, and GREE executives and the company’s lawyer have reportedly said they will not be offering her any additional support. (We’ve contacted GREE to see what they say about this and will update this post when we hear back from them). The woman says she has already filed a labor dispute with the relevant authorities in Beijing. A Beijing-based lawyer told the Beijing Times that GREE’s refusal to offer her additional support may violate Chinese labor laws, which make it difficult to terminate the contracts of pregnant women without offering significant additional compensation.

Whatever GREE ultimately decides (or is forced by the law) to do, the report has already damaged the company’s reputation. On weibo, the pregnant woman’s story has been reposted hundreds of times, and almost all the comments are in support of her rather than the company. It’s hard to believe that GREE couldn’t have seen this coming.

Frankly, whatever the law says shouldn’t matter much one way or the other; GREE stepping up to help out this woman ought to be a no-brainer, and I expect we’ll see it do that soon. Even if the law is on your side, it’s never good to bully a pregnant woman, and if paying for one birth and some extra months of maternity leave is what it takes, then GREE should just chock that up as part of the cost of shutting down its China office rather than trying to fight it in the legal system (and destroying its own reputation in China in the process).

(Beijing Times via Sina Tech)

We are reviewing our business to optimize our global game development operations through a process of selection and concentration, and this has led us to the difficult decision to close our China office and studio. GREE Beijing has developed several excellent games and the talented people who made up its staff have made a valuable contribution to GREE. We regret that we have had to make this closure and wish all the best to everyone affected.

Japan’s GREE has been a dominant force in mobile games on its home turf, and over the past few years has overseen an aggressive expansion overseas. But late last year the company was forced to lay off employees at its North American office, and now it has apparently shuttered its China branch completely.

We have contacted GREE for comment on this story and will update it if we hear back.

According to an internal announcement at GREE China yesterday (as reported by Sina Tech), the branch will totally cease operations on June 28th, and all of its employees will be laid off. The company has not yet announced a compensation plan for employees, but it should have plenty of time to roll something out over the next month and a half before the shutdown actually takes place.

The reason for GREE China’s demise — and the company’s declining fortunes in general — is generally believed to be its failure to recognize and commit to the global movement towards smartphones quickly enough. 60 percent of GREE’s revenue is still coming from feature phone users, but feature phone users are getting scarcer and the company has not carved out a dominant position as a smartphone gaming platform on either Android or iOS.

Of course, this is not to say the company is about to collapse. GREE is still projecting a net profit of around $300 million this quarter, but then again, if the company’s projections are correct it will be the first time since 2008 that GREE has seen its profits drop. It seems likely that given this shift, the company has decided to concentrate on its strengths on its home turf of Japan and reduce the degree to which it’s extended overseas. That’s probably a smart business move, but it’s a bummer for everyone working in the GREE China office.

Related: GREE’s founding story

(via Sina Tech)

Mr. Tanaka, founder of GREE at work.

Japanese gaming company GREE (TYO:3632) is one of the most admired companies from Asia. But few companies can defy the gravity of economics. What goes up must come down and that unfortunately is happening to GREE. (UPDATED: Corrected headline, which mistakenly gave impression we were talking about GREE’s total market cap).

Bloomberg writes:

In five years, Yoshikazu Tanaka became Japan’s youngest billionaire as investors piled into GREE, valuing his controlling stake in the early maker of phone-based games at $4 billion. Just 18 months later, that has shriveled to about $1.4 billion.

The report also says that GREE is facing increasing pressure from Apple’s App Store and also Google Play where new-age smartphone users are downloading their games. It says that “GREE relies on the generation of handsets that preceded smartphones for 60 percent of revenue.” So more Japanese switching over to smartphones further shrinks GREE’s paying user-base.

In all fairness, GREE’s games are available on iOS and Android platforms as well. But it has to give part of its revenue to Apple and Google, like any app developer or publisher in those stores. GREE was also perhaps slow to ride the smartphone gaming wave with an unsatisfactory rollout of its English gaming platform. To make up for its smartphone game shortcomings, GREE has acquired Funzio ($210 million), Pokelabo ($173 million), and App Ant in the past year. Still, its US expansion isn’t going as smoothly as planned and profit dipped in the last quarter.

New competitors like Line and KakaoTalk are making the competition even more intense as these mobile messaging apps are proving to be good social platforms to host mobile games. While games on mobile chat applications still run on iOS and Android (thus still needing to offer part of their revenue to Apple and Google), the profits still look healthy. GREE’s reaction to the mobile war is Tellit, built by GREE-invested eBuddy. It’s growing well but still falls way short of Line (120 million), WeChat (300 million), and KakaoTalk’s (80 million) immense user-bases.

With all the above said, I trust that GREE’s founder Tanaka has what it takes to overcome these challenges. GREE’s success didn’t just happen overnight. It overcame a lot of challenges to reach today’s height.

Japanese mobile gaming giant, GREE, has been secretly pushing its mobile messaging app, Tellit (Tell it). It was first launched as GREE Messenger late last year but has apparently since rebranded as Tellit in the middle of last month. When asked, a GREE representative declined to reveal user figures but said that Tellit has achieved number one under the free downloads section in Apple app store in Malaysia, Italy, and Germany. Tellit is available both on iOS and Android.

Tellit is built by GREE-invested eBuddy, an Amsterdam-based startup with over 100 staff who specializes in messaging products. Jonie Oostveen, director of strategic partnerships at eBuddy, tells me that although eBuddy built Tellit for GREE, it doesn’t help to market or chart the future of the chat app. It seems that eBuddy is in an odd position as it runs eBuddy XMS which is also a mobile messaging app. Tellit, as I understand, runs on the eBuddy backend too.

eBuddy XMS has more than two million monthly active users. That rises to 16 million monthly active users in total including the eBuddy IM chat aggregator. Oostveen describes XMS as having a more “European look and feel” compared to GREE’s Tellit. XMS doesn’t have stickers packs.

Tellit, on the other hand, fits with the general Asian culture better with a cuter overall design coupled with stickers similar to KakaoTalk, Line, and WeChat. I’m guessing that GREE has plans to make Tellit a mobile gaming platform once it gains steam. But a GREE representative said that the company has no plans to turn it into a mobile gaming platform just yet.

Whatever it is, GREE has two mobile messaging apps at its disposal. I guess it could tap into eBuddy XMS for the Western market and Tellit for the Asian market. But first it probably has to buy the rest of eBuddy to make that possible.

Of course, if you want to learn more about GREE, a good place to start would be this long interview we did with GREE founder Yoshikazu Tanaka.

For more fun graphics like this one, check out previous entries in our infographic series.

Line app has not just got people talking – it’s got them spending as well.

Regular readers will know that Japanese smartphone owners are great for spending money on apps. Now we have new data from AppAnnie, released this evening, that shows how the app monetization situation is developing in Japan and around the world. The report paints an interesting picture of amazing smartphone growth in Japan and Asia, along with some huge successes for Japanese social apps and games. Some world-beating achievements, in fact.

Cashing in on social

First up, AppAnnie notes that the social app category is third in terms of revenues around the world; social apps accounted for 30 percent more downloads in January 2013 compared to the previous year. Japanese app buyers are now spending nearly as much as those in the US on their iPhones and iPads:

Line app and the messaging explosion

The hit messaging app Line, made by NHN Japan, was the top social app for iOS revenue in Jansuary 2013, pipping Whatsapp to the post. With over 100 million registered users (just under half being in Japan), Line is the most downloaded social app in Japan – plus it’s the top grossing app Japan, Taiwan, and Thailand.

Line is also crowned the top non-game app in terms of monthly revenue on both iTunes and Google Play in January. It is the only Asian creation on the iOS apps list that’s dominated by American apps. Apple’s Pages app is second; Pandora Radio is third.

KakaoTalk comes out fighting against Line in the chat app battle, proving itself to be the third-best app for revenue on Android.

GungHo for gaming

As for gaming developers, Japan was once again on top. GungHo Online, with its 14 games, was the outright top publisher by revenue on iOS anywhere in the world. Its Puzzles and Dragons title was a particular hit, helping to push GungHo’s market cap to US$3.3 billion – higher than that of Zynga, or compatriot gaming rival GREE. As GungHo’s own financials point out, it made $92 million in gaming sales in January 2013 alone – a figure that’s already 30 percent of its 2012 revenue total. GungHo also sells PC games and console games, but the company recently pointed out that it’s now making more from iOS and Android.

Indeed, the report points out that Puzzles and Dragons was the top monetizing game on both iOS and Android across the globe.

Seventh on the top iOS publisher’s list is NHN (which is spread over Korea and Japan), boosted by the huge success from Line app and its social gaming platform. That’s shown with games like Line Birzzle, which rocketed to the top of iOS and Android store rankings across Asia. Let’s look at the scene on the iTunes App Store:

Asian Android domination

Even more Asian developers rocked the Android platform. GungHo was top publisher in Google Play too, with NHN popping up in second place. In fact, all but one of the leading ten publishers by revenue on Android are from Asia – it’s pretty amazing. It also shows why gaming is the best way to bring in the cash:

Other famliar names on the list include the rival social gaming platforms DeNA and GREE. Plus there’s a remarkable performance from Korea’s SundayToz team to make it into the top ten with only one game – that’s Anipang, which has been a huge hit especially on KakaoTalk’s own social gaming platform.

Anipang pops up as fourth in terms of gaming revenue on Android, just below the similar Line Pop title.

Game on for Asian developers

Ultimately, it’s a remarkable performance for Japanese and South Korean developers on both iOS and Android – breaking into social whilst also building up huge expertise in casual mobile gaming.

Japan recently passed the US to become the top country for Google Play revenue, so developers in the region can prosper among their regional audience – and break out across the globe. Well, in terms of monetizing power, if not necessarily worldwide market reach.

Yahoo Japan and GREE (TYO:3632) announced today what they had teased a few months back – the launch of a joint-venture company that will focus on developing and running social gaming titles for smartphones. After comitting ¥200 million (US$2.2 million) to this new gaming venture, a cat was then brought into the office and allowed to walk across a keyboard ¹, creating the joint-venture’s tentative name, GxYz.

GREE will hold 51 percent of the stake in GxYz, with the rest owned by Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO). Today’s announcement says that it’ll open for business on March 15th with GREE’s Tomoyuki Isaka as the CEO. The focus will be on Japanese gamers and doesn’t cover GREE’s overseas operations.

GREE is already Japan’s top social gaming platform, up against rivals as diverse as DeNA’s Mobage, Apple’s Game Center, and increasingly strong messaging apps with gaming integration, such as Line and KakaoTalk. The tie-up with Yahoo has already given GREE’s mobile titles greater exposure on Yahoo Japan, which is the country’s preferred search engine.

Today’s announcement summarizes:

Through the establishment of GxYz, the two companies aim to strengthen their smartphone social gaming business partnership, combining the user acquisition capabilities of Yahoo Japan with the social gaming development and operational expertise of GREE, while developing exceptional social games that will open up new possibilities in the game development business.

The two tech giants are already co-sponsoring Japan’s push to secure the 2020 Olympics.

As for Yahoo, we know that Yahoo Japan wants to be more social and mobile, so GREE seems like a good fit for the web portal company.

The GxYz name is not yet written in stone and could be replaced if a better one comes along – perhaps by picking letters at random from a bag of Scrabble tiles.

(Source: GREE, via TheNextWeb)

With the numbers Rick released on mobile messaging apps growth, and Willis’ post on how heated the mobile messaging battle is getting, I thought I’d take a look at the killer features that make messaging apps so strong with younger smartphone users in the region. They’re all a big threat to Facebook Messenger (which seems to be imitating Asian chat apps in some respects) and the newer Facebook Poke.

Why are these apps so hot? It all boils down to the virtual stickers and being so multimedia and immediate. This is where Asian apps are innovating like crazy.

Of course, all messaging apps have a set of features that mark them as messaging apps, so we’ll just note them in a quick list and move on:

• Instant messaging with ‘sending’ and ‘received’ notifications
• Group chat
• Sending a photo or video (WeChat and Zalo are the only ones that offer Instagram-like photo filters)
• Changing your chat area’s wallpaper
• Leaving an audio note or message
• Sharing contact info
• Sharing your location
• Live video or voice calling
• A microblogging feature like Path.

Now, I’ll go through the ten most prominent chat apps in Asia, and show you what each one has that makes them stand out from the others.

Chikka from the Philippines

Released: October 2010
Users: 500,000+

The Philippines, where foreign-made chat apps like Whatsapp and Viber rule the roost, also has its own messaging app called Chikka. The app is currently sitting in 28th position in the Apple App Store in the social networking category, which means it’s had hundreds of thousands of downloads. The app doesn’t have any notable additions beyond the basics. And hasn’t grown much over the past three years.

Comm from Japan

Released: October 2012
Users: ~5 million

Comm, created by social gaming platform DeNa, came out in October last year and already has five million users to date. The app is also the only one in this list that sports a left hand side tab bar, similar to the Facebook mobile app.

Cubie from Taiwan.

Released: March 2012
Users: ~5 million

Cubie centers its chat experience around allowing users to draw pictures (and to add text bubbles to those pictures) and send animated GIFs, which is not a very common function. Cubie also recently added a Snapchat/Facebook Poke-like feature, allowing users to send messages that disappear within 10 seconds. Only Cubie has this among the Asian-made apps, and it’s awesome. Cubie recently raised funding and joined 500 Startups’ incubation program.

GREE Messenger from Japan (only available in Australia, New Zealand, and India)

Released: February 2013
Users: 50,000+

The Japanese game platform juggernaut is stepping up its game by entering the chat app arena. It’s too soon to tell with the numbers, and the app only carries the basic features for now, but it’s bound to start integrating with the backing of GREE’s many game developers and designers.

KakaoTalk from South Korea.

Released: March 2010
Users: 75 million

Kakaotalk allows users to create and schedule an event with friends in the chat window. A feature that surprisingly no one else has. KakaoTalk is open source, thus allowing users to create their own themes. It also allows users to download a separate game app and play with Kakaotalk friends. KakaoTalk has also added localized stickers for Lunar New Year, and even pushed K-pop star stickers into the spotlight. It also has animated stickers and even ones with sound. And the most cool feature of all? The app allows users to buy vouchers for friends that can be redeemed at cooperating merchants. For example, I could buy you a coffee through the chat app, and you could show the coupon, and get it at your local coffee shop. Unfortunately, this has only been released in South Korea.

KakaoTalk also has social gaming integration, though that’s currently only running for users in Japan and South Korea.

Line from the Japanese team under South Korean company, NHN.

Released: June 2011
Users: 100 million

Line allows users to send cards, drawings, pictures, and play games. Games have been a huge factor in drawing users to the chat platform. Unfortunately, these features can only be accessed after users download separate apps. It makes much more sense to me to get them natively in the app. But this hasn’t stopped the chat app from accumulating a massive base of users. The design is really nice and it sells $2 sticker packs. Line also pushes celebrities’, companies’, and even lotteries’ info to users’ chat screens.

Its makers, NHN Japan, plan to focus even more on Line in 2013, and will even spin it off into a separate company.

Nimbuzz from India via the Netherlands

Released: November 2008
Users: 100 million

Although the app is originally a Dutch company, it moved its headquarters to India in mid-2011. The app is relatively simple like Chikka and GREE Messenger but offers integration with online chat applications like Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk, Facebook, and Windows Live Messenger. It also has a feature where users can make international calls. Some might say this is more like an older style instant messenger (IM) app.

WeChat from China’s Tencent.

Released: January 2011
Users: 300 million

WeChat allows users to access add-ons, like Battery Doctor and Find Nearby, which users can install (or disable) just like browser extensions. Plus, WeChat has live video and voice calling, in addition to the option of sending shorter voice or video clips. This is perhaps the most multimedia of all messaging apps.

It also offers a web interface so you can send messages via any web browser – it’s activated with a neat QR code. In its newest update last week, WeChat added song recognitionc (like SoundHound) and voice chatrooms.

Plus, WeChat also has a broader social network inside it, called Moments, which is basically a lot like Path.

WeChat employs a cool feature for users to find new friends by shaking their phones. If I shake my phone and you shake yours at the same time, we’ll be able to chat with each other. Also, it lets users find people by checking who else is using the app within a one-to-two kilometer radius. Alongside its massive user-base and local Chinese advantage, WeChat is taking on Whatsapp and Line in Southeast Asia, and is pushing into global markets as well.

Zalo from Vietnam.

Released: August 2012
Users: 500,000+

Zalo is Vietnam’s homegrown challenger. It’s made by sVNG (formerly Vina Gaming) and has been accumulating users at breakneck speeds. It’s already at the top of the Vietnamese iOS App Store. Zalo allows users to send drawings natively in the app, and allows users to play a Vietnamese version of Draw Something. It’s also got animated stickers with sound like KakaoTalk, featured mainly for Lunar New Year.

Zalo, like WeChat, allows users to find new friends within a five kilometer radius. But, hungry for more users, it also lets users to go into topic-specific group chats to find friends. Built on the still burgeoning forum culture in Vietnam.

Relationship Apps

A special mention goes to relationship apps, which are decidedly niche messaging apps. Given the relative success of these smaller apps and the increasingly crowded space created by the mains apps discussed above, I wouldn’t be surprised to see more “vertical messaging apps” that cater to specific segments of the texting market. After all, we already have flirting apps, and now the “self-destructing” messaging apps. These relationship apps are sort of the opposite of those other apps, and are all about trust and intimacy.

Between from South Korea.

Released: November 2011
Users: 2 million+

With Between, on top of allowing users to text each other as in the big general apps, it also allows users to create albums together, write cute notes to each other, and remember events like anniversaries together.

Between recently raised nearly $3 million in funding.

Lovebyte from Singapore

Released: July 2012
Users: 40,000+ (but apparently enough to crash its servers)

Like Between, Lovebyte also allows users to create albums, notes, save dates, and even add milestones like the first date. Plus, it can store details like a couple’s favorite movie, and even displays how many days you and your loved one have been together. A cool feature that the app has on the side is allowing users to send each other scratchcards. It’s basically a two-sided flashcard that you send to your loved one. You put text on both sides, and your loved one scratches the other side to see a love note that you put on the other side. A cute and interesting idea for young couples in love. Lovebyte launched on Android a couple of weeks ago.

The Innovation Continues

As you can see, this list is jam-packed with innovative ideas for communicating and connecting with friends, family, and loved ones. From KakaoTalk’s mobile payment vouchers to WeChat’s ’Look Around’ feature to Zalo’s version of Draw Something, there are so many cool things that users are able to do in these messaging apps. With the battle raging on, I’m sure companies will be using 2013 to pump out even more cool features, and the user numbers will just keep doubling.

Today GREE (TYO:3632) announced that it is officially releasing its NFL-branded card battle game for iPhone, called NFL Shuffle. Of course, regular readers of this blog may recall that the game was actually soft launched back around Christmas time, at which point I gave it a test run and gave my impressions. I’m a big NFL fan, so I enjoyed it — but there were more than a few bugs, as I noted at the time.

But it was, after all an early release, so it’s to be expected that there might be some wrinkles to iron out. So now that GREE is ‘officially’ releasing this one, one would think that all the bugs are fixed, yes? Regrettably not. Update: A subsequent update seems to have fixed most of the issues. Great to see them finally on top of this!

The tasks listed in the ‘goals’ section still aren’t all functional, notably ‘Message a friend’ and ‘Win in overtime.’ Thankfully, the mentoring function has been fixed since I originally looked at the game, so the issues above are only minor annoyances.

In addition to those, however, any NFL fan will probably find that the range of cards doesn’t appear to be as wide as you might expect. I mean, there’s only so many time that you can draw chunky Jets linebacker Mike DeVito when you have your hopes on a Adrian Peterson or RGIII… The level of difficulty is unusual too, as the game start out easy as pie, but when you graduate to veteran, winning is the later stages is suddenly impossible unless you shell out for gold to buy premium cards (which I guess is the business model).

In any case, I should say that it’s not a bad game overall. But I’m disappointed that the minor issues were not fixed before this ‘official’ release, because otherwise I think the game has a lot of potential. Football fans could also try out DeNA’s recently released NFL Matchups, which looks to be almost the same game, although I have yet to try it out yet.

And if the card battle games don’t cut it for you, there’s always that little thing called the Superbowl coming up soon (Prediction: Niners 34 – Ravens 31).

Mobile social gaming giant GREE (TYO:3632) has issued an announcement in Japanese today apologizing that some minors were charged beyond the spending limits that the company put in place last April.

Between April 26 and September 7, GREE says that some 733 minors were affected by a system failure on feature phones which allowed them to spend more than the imposed restrictive spending limit (5,000 yen per month for under 15 years old; 10,000 yen per month for ages 16 to 19 ¹). The error affected some minors on feature phones, who used credit cards as their payment option.

GREE became aware of this error on September 6, and is refunding those over-charges, amounting to over 28 million yen (or about $322,000) in total.

It’s certainly not a good note to start the year on, but of course given the controversial Kompu Gacha issue that plagued GREE and other social gaming companies in 2012, it is wise for the company to publicly acknowledge and atone for the error in this manner.

GREE first introduced restrictive payments for minors back in April of last year (as Serkan Toto pointed out at the time), and so it appears that this failure/error occurred soon after that system went into place. GREE’s rival DeNA also implemented the same sort of cap just a few weeks afterwards. (Via NHK, including television report)

It has been a pretty busy year in the mobile space in Japan. While the prevailing narrative in most western media has been the demise of Japanese tech companies, it’s important to note that there are some bright spots. Social gaming companies like DeNA (TYO:2432), GREE (TYO:3632), and even NHN Japan with its Line chat platform are all doing really interesting stuff on mobile.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been looking back at our coverage from 2012. For myself in particular as the Tokyo editor, that means reflecting on a crazy year in mobile gaming. It has been a year of rapid expansion outside of Japan for many of these companies, and we’re seeing some new types of games emerge along with new business models too. For more information on all this, click on over to our special year-in-review feature. It’s by no means complete, but we hope you find it useful:

[2012 in Review: Japanese Mobile Social Gaming & Other Highlights]

I think that game developers all over the world can certainly learn from many of these companies, as they try to push the envelope in the mobile gaming industry both at home and abroad. It will be interesting to watch them in 2013 as well!

I’ve been having lots of fun trying out mobile games from the card battle genre over the past year. So far, my favorites have probably been the very popular Rage of Bahamut from Cygames and the recently released NFL Shuffle from GREE. But the latter company, GREE, has released a new social card battle game that I’m excited to try: Grand Sumo Card Battle. It’s currently available on feature phones, with pre-registration available for smartphone users [1].

The game will be free to play, and since it is created in cooperation with the Japan Sumo Association, featured wrestlers will include the two current Yokozuna, Hakuho and Harumafuji, as well as retired stars like Chiyonofuji. The association previously announced the game back in September, so its good to see it finally released, even if it’s just on feature phones for now [2]. Gameplay will take players on a tour though Japan, where they can develop and train wrestlers as they face their competition.

As someone who has gradually become a fan of sumo during my time here in Japan, I hope that this game can see some success. The sport of sumo is not so popular among young people these days, so perhaps if the JSA threw some support behind a game like this, perhaps they could reach some younger fans.

It would also be nice to see an English/global version of this sumo card battle game, although given that the sport isn’t that popular outside Japan’s borders, I can’t see that happening. But nevertheless, it is cool to see a title like this.

On a somewhat related note, you can expect sumo wrestlers to be invading Google Street View very soon as well, as they posed for Google’s tricycle mounted camera recently on Christmas Day. [Via Gamebiz.jp]

Japanese mobile gaming company GREE (TYO:3632) has quietly pushed out an NFL-branded card battle game for iOS late last week called NFL Shuffle. This comes on the heels of a similar MLB title which came out this past October, and has fared ok in the ‘sports’ and ‘role playing’ categories.

Speaking as a big fan of NFL football and as someone who is warming up to the card battle genre, this was a game I was excited to try out. You start out by picking your offensive and defensive captains for your team. From there you take them into battle in either season or versus mode. In games, the value of your card in comparison to your opponent’s determines your chances of moving forward from the line of scrimmage. If your opponent has a higher value card on his defensive squad, you’ll want to use one of your limited ‘swaps’ or ‘shuffles,’ or else you run the risk of a fumble or interception.

You have four downs to go the length of the field, and if you don’t score, the ball is turned over to the other team. There are no kickers or punters in the game, so you’re limited to quarterbacks, running backs, and tight ends on offense. In order to build a better team, you can collect new cards and evolve them via the mentoring feature. Although for me, I found that this card evolve function just stopped working after I reached around level 10. Hopefully that can be fixed in an upcoming release. Update: It appears to be working fine now. But there are still some bugs with some of the goals you’re required to complete.

Users can also collect gold as the seasons go on, giving them the ability to buy premium cards. In my own game so far, premium cards have been Darrelle Revis, Andre Johnson, and Donald Brown [1]. If the evolution function hadn’t broke, I might have really enjoyed merging my crappy cards to boost them even further.

Overall it looks like a really promising game. And assuming that the early bugs get fixed, I think it could be one my favorite GREE games to date. But it remains to be seen if it’s something that most NFL fans would go for.

I do recommend that football fans out there give it a try and let us know what you think [2]. It can be downloaded now from the US app store.

GREE (TYO:3632) and Yahoo Japan (TYO:4689) have announced today that the companies will co-sponsor Tokyo’s 2020 Olympic bid. Beginning on December 26, both companies will roll out advertising in newspapers, public transport, and on the streets.

GREE and Yahoo Japan have helped to set up a website (ko-yaku2020.jp) where the public can pledge their support for the 2020 Olympic bid, along with celebrities and sports figures who have already done so. In a somewhat humorous way, you can write down what you promise to do if Tokyo is successful in its bid. As you can see below, GREE’s CEO Yoshikazu Tanaka has pledged to make Tokyo a little greener by planting 2,020 plants in the city.

I really like that both these companies are throwing their support behind the Olympic bid. Although I can’t help but observe that this further illustrates the divergent strategies of GREE and its rival DeNA. GREE has been very aggressive in its marketing over the past year or so, with a huge presence at the Tokyo Game Show and E3, while DeNA took a pass. The company had billboards in San Francisco and ads in airports around the world.

But despite all this, it appears that DeNA has had the better year, both in terms of revenue and in terms of mindshare among gamers with its hit card battle title Rage of Bahamut, which we learned today has surpassed 10 million users.

GREE’s investment in eBuddy hasn’t gotten much press attention compared to its other acquisitions. But within our newsroom we suspected GREE’s long-term strategy has got something to do with messaging, which could possibly be aligned with its future strategy in mobile game distribution.

We were right. As my colleague Rick wrote about GREE Messenger’s secret/test launch earlier today, I wondered if this involves eBuddy. And the answer turns out to be a yes. A GREE representative told us:

Yes, we have released a chat app in India, Australia, and New Zealand, but it’s only a test version. And we have been developing it with eBuddy.

It is not clear if GREE Messenger will ride on eBuddy’s 250 million worldwide users. But I would speculate that it’s likely. eBuddy’s messaging platform works like Apple’s iMessage or NHN’s Line, allowing users to text on mobile and desktop interchangeably. In other words, the social graph extends to both mobile and desktop which might just bring in the possibility for GREE to launch desktop games in the future. I’m not suggesting that it will, but there’s a possibility for this too.

And given that eBuddy is working so closely with GREE on launching a customized messaging platform for its investor, it seems like the relationship isn’t just that of a mere minority investor. It is perhaps very likely that GREE could acquire the entire eBuddy team to focus on mobile chat if GREE Messenger works out well.

So social gaming rival DeNA, with its new Comm app, isn’t the only one working on mobile messaging in 2013. We’re in for another mobile chat app war between these two Japanese gaming companies.

The folks over on Techwave are pointing out this morning that Japanese mobile social gaming giant GREE (TYO:3632) has now joined the mobile chat application frenzy that has been so popular in Asia this year. It’s new GREE Messenger application now joins the likes of domestic rivals Comm (from DeNA) and Line from NHN Japan, not to mention Korea’s KakaoTalk and China’s WeChat.

All of these apps have aspirations for the global market, and and GREE Messenger looks to be no exception, as the company has quietly released it in just a few regional app stores as far as I can see. Currently the iOS app is available in the Australia, New Zealand, and India app stores, so if you’re in one of those locations, you can take it for a spin. It’s available for Android, but with some apparent geographical restrictions as well [1].

While I haven’t tested it out yet due to geographical restrictions, the chat app looks very much like others in the category, with the same sort of cute cartoon stickers that we have seen from Line and Comm. It can import contacts from your phone book or from Facebook, and it also has group chats as well. The app is free if you’d like to check it out, but you will need a phone number to register.

Given the success that Line and KakaoTalk have seen with distributing their games via their chat messengers, both GREE Messenger and Comm are efforts from Japan’s gaming giants to not get left behind. Although neither company has said so yet, I think we can look forward to seeing both GREE and DeNA bring games into their messengers in 2013.

Image: Looops, freshtrax

The folks over at Looops Communications recently put together a good overview of some of the major social platforms in Japan [1]. And there’s a helpful translation here from freshtrax if you’d like to read it in full. It includes social gaming platforms, so there is an element of comparing apples and oranges here – but I think it’s informative, and worth sharing here.

When comparing the revenue of GREE, DeNA’s Mobage, CyberAgent’s Ameba, and Mixi, perhaps the most notable trend is the recent plunge that GREE (in blue, above) is experiencing. We touched on this back in November, citing a company representative who thinks the company is already seeing a recovery trend. Looops cites GREE’s CEO Yoshikazu Tanaka as saying that issues like Kompu Gatcha were a setback, and this of course, affected DeNA and other game companies too.

At GREE booth, Tokyo Game Show 2012

As social games expert Serkan Toto pointed out today, both DeNA and GREE – even with recent setbacks – are putting western counterparts like Zynga to shame when it comes to revenue, profit, and market cap.

The Looops article (and freshtrax translation) has a little more to say on CyberAgent and Mixi too, but I was particularly struck by the above chart which shows exactly how far ahead GREE and DeNA are from their nearest social rivals in Japan.

I should note that NHN’s Line could perhaps be included as one of the social ‘big boys’ in Japan now as well, and it would certainly be interesting to see where its revenue lies these days too. CyberAgent is one to watch as well, as it has dropped some significant ad money on promoting Ameba smartphone services recently on television. And as we have seen in the past in Japan (GREE, DeNA’s Mobage and Comm, Line), TV ad spots can often be a catalyst for a spike in user adoption and public mindshare.

There was lots of interesting tech news going down in Asia this week, and particularly in China. The iPhone hit in a few new countries, although there was more going down around the region that warranted attention.

Coincidentally, much of the news from this week did center around apps that run on iPhones though. I guess there just isn’t any escape, is there?

Charlie’s pick: You’ll Never Guess What The9 and ZTE Are Teaming Up to Work On

The MIIT news is huge, too — Steven will explain that shortly — but I’m going to pick this news this week because I think it’s indicative of where a lot of Chinese tech companies are headed right now. I won’t give away what it is they’re working on, but it’s something a lot of other tech and web companies are thinking about working on, too.

Rick’s pick: GREE’s ‘Metal Gear Solid: Social Ops’ Hit 100,000 Downloads in First 2 Days

This new title from GREE and Konami got off to a good start with 100,000 downloads in its first two days. And today we’re hearing that it the mobile game has gone on surpassed 500,000 downloads. And to mark the occasion, players will be able to earn 1.5x experience points from now until December 17 as part of its campaign to mark the milestone.

Steven’s pick: China’s App-ocalypse? All App Stores Might Have to be Regulated

China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) seems keen to regulate all of the nation’s app stores, leaving developers worried about the potential impact. This would apply even to Apple’s iTunes App Store and Google Play. While it might help control piracy and malware on the numerous third-party app stores in China, this kind of monitoring by authorities will, I reckon, likely involve some meddling into the kinds of apps that can be distributed.

Willis’ pick: Line App Launches in China

The chat app war is getting really intense! Tencent might have thought that WeChat was safe and secure in China with it huge user base. But Line isn’t giving up without a fight, hoping to loosen WeChat’s stranglehold in China. It’s unlikely Line will win the battle, but it’s ballsy for NHN Japan to take such big risk. Grab your popcorn, place your bets. We may be in for an epic battle in China between Line and WeChat. 

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.

There’s interesting news from GREE (TYO:3632) today, as the social gaming giant issued an announcement that it is expanding its US games business via a new mobile investment fund. But the company also explains that there will be some adjustments, with most of the GREE platform team “transitioned to new departments with redundancies in some areas.”

It adds that the GREE platform business will transition to its Tokyo headquarters. This all comes after the shutdown of OpenFeint a few weeks back, and the folks over on TechCrunch report that most layoffs (as much as 30 or more) are coming from the OpenFeint team or direct US hires. We’ve requested confirmation on that point, but GREE reps declined to comment beyond the original announcement.

GREE’s recent FY2013 first quarter financials saw net sales and operating profit down for a second straight quarter, although the company told us at the time that sales had increased in August and September and that they saw a trend towards a recovery. Labor costs due to expanding global operations were cited, so perhaps these reorganizations will address that issue.

As for GREE’s new investment fund, which made up the ‘good’ in a good-news/bad-news announcement, it says that the first venture in this fund will be San Francisco-based games studio MunkyFun, receiving $3 million in investment from GREE. Among the studio’s most recent games are My Horse and Bounty Bots.

Most recently GREE has also been active in establishing partnerships in Latin America, with prominent tie-ups with Brazilian game developer Vostu, as well as Columbian 3D animation and media studio, Brainz.

GREE booth at Tokyo Game Show 2012

Back at the Tokyo Game Show earlier this year, Metal Gear Solid was prominently displayed at the GREE (TYO:3632) booth, in anticipation of the upcoming release in Japan. That release – together with publisher Konami (NYSE:KNM) – is today, as Metal Gear Solid: Social Ops has finally been released.

For now, the card battle RPG rendition of the popular franchise is only available in Japanese, but it’s a high-profile addition to GREE’s gaming portfolio in its home market.

The 3D graphics look very impressive, and it includes elements that Japanese elements will enjoy, like gacha which allows you to win new cards. I’ve never really gotten deep into this franchise, but nevertheless I find it interesting to see the game presented as a card battle game. I guess it does keep the controls simple, even though the graphics of the battle scenes make the action appear complex.

Japan is pretty crazy about card battle games, with the most famous export thus far being Cygames’s Rage of Bahamut on Mobage. If you’d like to learn more about the genre, Serkan Toto has a great explanation here.

You can check out the promo video for Metal Gear Solid: Social Ops below. And if you’d like to try it out for yourself, it’s available for download over on Apple’s app store, and over on Google Play. Screenshots are below. [h/t VS Media]

Yesterday Japanese mobile gaming giant GREE (TYO:3632) announced a partnership with Brazilian game developer Vostu, the leading social games company in Latin America. And now just a day later, GREE has announced another tie-up in the region, which will bring Vampire Season – Monster Defense to its GREE platform.

The title is developed by Brainz, which is part of Columbia-based ZIO, one of the top 3D animation and media studios on the continent.

According to the announcement, the company worked closely with GREE recently to improve the game, rebuild levels, and introduce currencies in the game. Vampire Season – Monster Defense is a tower defense game where players assume the responsibility of protecting Count Dracula from an onslaught of bad good guys. The 3D graphics look pretty sharp, and I’m looking forward to checking this one out.

The game is available for iOS currently, and it will be coming over to the GREE platform in the next few weeks, along with an Android version as well. For a preview of how it looks, check out the trailer below.

For GREE, this partnership marks the second step in its explorations in Latin America, after it established a subsidiary in São Paulo, Brazil earlier in the year to facilitate such activity.

Japanese social gaming giant GREE (TYO:3632) is announcing today that it is partnering with Latin American game company Vostu to bring hit game Shaking Vegas to mobile via the GREE platform. The game will be available for free on both iOS and Android in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.

With offices in São Paulo and Buenos Aires, Vostu is the largest social games developer in Latin America, and was said to be valued at about $300 million last year. it has over 20 million gamers playing its titles each month on Facebook, Orkut, and Google+. The company’s CEO Matias Recchia notes that things are growing at a furious pace in the region with regards to mobile gaming:

The mobile entertainment market has grown exponentially in Brazil. This trend is evident not only by the numbers of smartphone sales, but also in the way Brazilian people now look at mobile – smartphones and tablets – as a viable form of entertainment. […] The mobile version of Shaking Vegas is the result of the efforts of our developers and the partnership with GREE, and our desire to bring players a new exciting way to experience a casino game.

Shaking Vegas is a casual, casino-style matching game where players need to destroy blocks of the same color in less than 60 seconds. And on the GREE platform, social features such as friend invitations, achievement sharing and leaderboards will be implemented as well. You can check out a quick video promo for the game below.

For GREE, this is the latest of what has been a flurry of global expansion through partnerships and acquisitions. The company established a subsidiary in São Paulo, Brazil earlier this year partly to facilitate efforts like the one announced today.

Back in 2011, GREE’s rival DeNA also looked to the region when it acquired Atakama Labs, its first Latin American subsidiary.

GREE, Tokyo Game Show 2012

Japanese mobile social gaming giant GREE (TYO:3632) announced its FY2013 first quarter financial results yesterday, with net sales and operating profit both down for a second consecutive quarter.

These results are not far off from an article published earlier in the month from The Nikkei [1] which reported as much. A GREE representative tells us this morning that the company’s sales have increased in both August and September, and that they are confident that there is a trend towards a recovery.

The company’s labor cost has been rising of late, due to its ever-expanding global operations, and there are also effects from global games that fell behind schedule. I understand that GREE plans to continue its already aggressive marketing in order to reach its goals.

[Download image version of chart]

Yesterday the company also announced a partnership with SingTel for mobile games in Singapore, as well as an initiative to expand its HTML5 compatibility for the GREE platform. Regarding this latter point, our friend Serkan Toto has an interesting take on why this could be the wrong approach. Go check it out. I’m not a developer, so I’m not really sure if this is the wrong approach or not. My guess would be that eliminating any obstacles between them and the user’s money would be a plus.

The big news today from GREE, the Japan-based social gaming platform, is that it’s now accepting mobile games built in HTML5. The now-HTML5-compatible social gaming platform will roll out in beta starting this month.

Of course, GREE still publishes and hosts games made for iOS and Android. But having mobile browser-based games ensures compatibility across all types of smartphones. All you need is a HTML5 compatible mobile browser to play. On top of that, GREE has also increased its language support from just Japanese and English to include 14 other languages. Plus, the company notes that it “also plans to launch its own in-house social games as web apps.” As for payments, the gaming platform is adding support for Paypal alongside the usual array of credit cards; there’ll also be a total of 166 mobile carriers supporting gaming payments via telco billing.

HTML5 gaming was a major aspect of the serious deal earlier today between GREE and SingTel.

The other part of the story is simple percentages. GREE wishes to escape paying 30 percent of its app revenue to Apple and Google (both companies take around 30 percent of the income generated by app sales in their stores). It’s a logical route to take – delivering games straight into consumers’ hands – and I’m excited to see how it pans out.

GREE isn’t unfamiliar with mobile browser games. In Japan, many games are still played on mobile browsers. But HTML5 gives developers more room to breathe. Noritaka Kobayashi, VP of the Business Development Department at GREE Singapore, tells me:

We have talked to our third-party partners. Most of them are very interested in building HTML5 games. The competition in app stores is too tough and it’s hard to maintain the ranking. So once HTML5 works, [developers] might shift easily.

So far there is only one title in HTML5 — Cerberus Age — for this open beta launch. But more proven titles on the app stores will soon be converted to HTML5 soon.

Today, mobile gaming giant GREE announced that it has exclusively partnered up with SingTel to promote its mobile games in Singapore. Besides promoting games, the partnership will allow subscribers to pay for games or virtual items through SingTel direct carrier billing. This partnership, for now, is limited to the Singapore market.

Many folks (myself included) might be surprised and wondering why GREE is focusing so much on Singapore, which just has 5 million inhabitants. Noritaka Kobayashi, VP, Business Development Department of GREE Singapore office, explains that Singapore has a high smartphone penetration rate. According to IDA’s statistics for Q1 2012, there are more than 5.9 million 3G users in Singapore.

Contrary to what Singaporeans might think, Kobayashi explains that Singaporean gamers are actually willing to pay for mobile games and in-app items. He tells me:

Compared to the U.S., Singapore’s average revenue per user (ARPU) is very close. It depends on the games and weeks. Sometimes, Singapore [could be] higher than the US or even Japan.

I was also pointed to the game Cerberus Age, which generates ridiculous amounts of ARPU in Singapore. In terms of growth forecast, GREE hopes to grow 500 percent a year in revenue from today onwards across APAC, excluding Japan, China, and Korea.

Besides Singapore, GREE is also targeting strong partnerships in five particular markets: Singapore, Australia, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, and India. So if the SingTel partnership works well in Singapore, there’s a good chance that the Japanese company will extend this SingTel partnership to Philippines, Australia, India, and Indonesia. Yes, SingTel has subsidiaries in each market.

[UPDATED moments later: Our story on GREE's other big news today, its push into HTML5 mobile gaming, is now online. Clearly it's linked to this SingTel deal, so as to side-step Apple and Google, who each take about 30 percent of app revenue via their app stores].

This SingTel tie-up is set up to promote just HTML5 games. So I expressed the assumption to GREE’s APAC head that SingTel is likely taking less than 30 percent revenue share from this partnership. But Kobayashi didn’t deny or confirm if my assumption was right.

Cheong Hai Thoo, Head of Multimedia, Group Digital L!fe, SingTel said in the statement:

We are delighted to be the first to offer web-based GREE games with direct billing to our customers on their smartphones. There has been a huge increase in the number of people playing games on their phones and the convenience of paying and receiving one bill while playing GREE’s great range of games is a definite selling point.

Dragon Collection, Tokyo Game Show 2012

Konami (NYSE:KNM) is announcing today that its popular Dragon Collection game is now available in North America for iOS on the GREE (TYO:3632) platform.

Technically speaking, the game has been available in Canada since August as our friend Serkan Toto pointed out when it launched on the Canadian app store. In Canada, the game’s performance has been modest to date, briefly breaching the top ten rankings in the ‘card’ and ‘strategy’ categories. But Konami and GREE have now launched it for the US market as well, and it remains to be seen how it will fare there.

Dragon Collection is one of the biggest and most successful card battle games in Japan, with more than 7 million users in that country alone.

The announcement says that there will be new monsters designed for this English version of the game, but the core gameplay will be the same as the original.

If you’d like to give it a try, you can get it now in the App Store. An Android version is said to be coming later this year.

GREE Advertising CEO Tatsuhei Asanuma, AppDisco CFO BumRyung Yoo

We haven’t heard too much about GREE Advertising, the ad subsidiary of the Japanese gaming giant which was launched back in April. But this week it has announced a tie-up with South Korea’s AppDisco, the maker of the popular AdLatte application, which rewards users with redeemable points for watching ads and answering quizzes.

The partnership will see GREE Advertising become the exclusive advertising agent in Japan for AdLatte on both Android and iOS. AdLatte has been doing well in Japan thus far with over a million subscribers in Japan, in addition to the three million subscribers it has at home in Korea. Back in December of last year, it was briefly the top free iOS app in the Japan app store.

The announcement further states that the two companies hope to create “new promotional opportunities for developer and advertisers alike.”

Back in August GREE Advertising announced a partnership with French mobile affiliate network MobPartner to help bring new promotional tools and user acquisition services to developers on the GREE platform.

The GREE subsidiary is to later have offices overseas, notably in North America, Europe, and Asia, to help facilitate these kinds of global partnerships.

Today Japan’s DeNA (TYO:2432) has announced that it will be expanding its PC social games alliance with Yahoo Japan (TYO:4689) to include smartphones and smart devices. This will begin in the spring of 2013.

The PC gaming platform Yahoo Mobage, just celebrated its two year anniversary on October 7, and boasts over 9 million registered users. It was also mentioned in today’s announcement that Yahoo Japan and DeNA plan to interconnect user ID and loyalty point systems on smartphones, which should make things a little easier for users.

Yahoo Japan also announced a smartphone partnership with DeNA’s rival GREE yesterday. But yesterday CNet Japan cited Manabu Miyasaka, Yahoo Japan’s president and CEO, as saying that their Yahoo portal is not exclusionary, and that the company hopes to partner with companies who can offer quality services.

Overall, Yahoo Japan has more than a few gaming partners, and the existing DeNA/Yahoo Japan partnership isn’t affected by the smartphone deal/discussions with GREE.

While Yahoo Japan is increasing its focus on smartphones, its biggest asset is still its PC portal with more than 26 million active user IDs.

DeNA recently reported its Q2 financials which saw it post a whopping $626 million in revenue. This week also saw the company bust open its piggy bank to buy up 20 percent of Cygames for $92 million. Cygames is the developer behind the hit Mobage game Rage of Bahamut as well as the recently released Marvel War of Heroes.

Mobile gaming giant GREE (TYO:3632) has announced its acquisition of Japanese game publisher Pokelabo (short for ‘Pocket Laboratory’) for 13.8 billion yen, or about $173.8 million.

Pokelabo was established in 2007, the company has evolved from content development and eventually has moved into the area of social games for smartphones. Some notable games on its roster include Mystic Monsters, Sengoku Fantasia, and The Clan Battle of Fate.

The Wall Street Journal has an informative interview with Pokelabo board member and DCM partner Gen Isayama [1], who sheds some light on how the company is doing financially:

Every two to three hours there’s an event happening within each of the games where all the players get together to form a team and fight against monsters and whatnot. That event creates a very sticky environment and engages users. People end up buying a lot of weapons and other items. The company is monetizing very well. […] They’re doing close to $4 million or $5 million a month and it’s growing. They are very profitable. They have maybe 1.5 million registered users and about 200,000 are daily active users.

He adds that GREE was a good fit for Pokelabo, representing the quickest route to taking its business global.

Of course, this is note the first blockbuster buy for GREE this year, as the company previously acquired San Francisco-based game developer Funzio back in May for $210 million dollars. Just last week that studio, now under the umbrella of GREE International, launched Monster Quest, which briefly made it to the number one position in the games category on the US app store for iPhone and iPad.

image from gamebiz.jp

The folks over at Gamebiz.jp pointed out yesterday evening that GREE’s (TYO:3632) new title Monster Quest, which was released just last Friday, has already reached the rank of number one free game in the US app store for iPhone and iPad. It’s also ranked sixth in Singapore and Italy, and in the top ten in many other regions including the UK and Germany.

And while this is certainly a good start for GREE’s North American studio, Monster Quest hasn’t satisfied everyone, as Pete Davison over on Inside Mobile Apps writes the following in a less-than-enthusiastic review:

GREE’s considerable skills at user acquisition, retention and monetization will doubtless ensure that Monster Quest enjoys a healthy audience at least in the short term — its various engagement and monetization strategies are tried, tested and proven. […] Ultimately, though, Monster Quest is a drab, uninteresting and eminently forgettable experience. It’s yet another title to add to the pile of mobile games attempting to put a “freemium” spin on successful, established franchises and missing the point entirely in the process.

I have yet to play Monster Quest, since it’s not available via the Japanese app store. But it will be interesting to see if the initial success of this Pokemon-style game can be sustained in markets abroad. Let’s wait and see how this plays out.

[h/t Serkan Toto for pointing out the review]

GREE’s (TYO:3632) US studio has just announced a new title, as Monster Quest has just dropped for iPhone and iPad. The game is free to play, and lets players collect, train, and fuse monsters in order to create a monster empire.

Monsters represent eight elements, with each type possessing certain characteristics that will help them in battle. But in addition to this battle element players can also build habitats as well, sort of as you would in a farming or city-building game. The graphics look really sharp (it has retina support), and the variety of missions (over 300) should provide lots of opportunity to explore.

GREE International’s Kenneth Chiu explained:

In Monster Quest, the talented members of the team that brought us Crime City, Modern War, and Kingdom Age have created a smooth, high performance game that uniquely ties fantastic art with a deep single player experience and high quality PVP interactions.

The team that Chiu is referring to there is, of course, Funzio. Our readers may recall that GREE acquired the San Francisco-based game developer back in May for the huge sum of $210 million dollars.

You can check out GREE’s trailer and some images for Monster Quest below.

from forum user spectra

Tokyo Game Show 2012

Zynga’s (NASDAQ:ZNGA) recent reversal of fortunes brought up several questions about the social gaming and virtual goods model. The company’s growth is so closely linked to Facebook (NASQAQ:FB) that it is often indistinguishable which of the two was riding on the other’s growth. In any case, Zynga was the first application to leverage Facebook as a marketing platform at such a large scale and with such success. In doing so, it also heralded a wave of social gaming that shook traditional gaming companies into rethinking their offerings.

Zynga’s recent fall has simultaneously exposed the chinks in its strategy (which was leveraged by other players) and highlighted a growing trend among similar players in the social gaming space who are running into similar problems.

Over-reliance on a foreign user acquisition engine

Social gaming is a great example of user acquisition based not on relevance to target users, but on repeated incentives to current users to send invites to new users. There are two interesting points about social gaming in its current state:

1. Viral acquisition: Social games rely heavily on virality. This is often baked into the game mechanics. Users can acquire time (faster leveling up) or resources in the game by inviting their friends. The entire game is built around users calling other users in. This virality is NOT word of mouth; it has nothing to do with a positive experience that users may have had on the game.

2. Cross-promotion: Social games rely heavily on hits and cross-sell. Whenever Zynga puts out a new game out, it acquires users from existing games (cross-sell). However, this has a lot to do with momentum. If a game falls through in between, the audience carry-over suffers. In general, social gaming companies maximize revenues by making users play more games, thereby creating more monetization opportunities.

The two factors above imply that social gaming, unlike every other form of gaming, can scale well only on an underlying user-acquisition platform. Facebook, of course, was perfect as a user acquisition platform. The problem, though, was that this made Zynga and others over-reliant on the Facebook, and hence, over-exposed their business to any policy changes that limited the use of the platform.

Piggybacking on another network

Zynga and Facebook, not best friends anymore

Zynga’s growth strategy was piggybacking on Facebook’s growth. Networked businesses often ride the success of another network. Paypal rode eBay’s growth and YouTube was helped by MySpace’s growth early on. The key driver for success in piggybacking on another network’s growth is the ability of the overlying network to add value to users of the underlying network. Paypal provided eBay users a method for instant payment. Youtube provided Myspace (and later Facebook) users a way to easily share videos.

The problem with some of the social gaming companies piggybacking on Facebook, though, was that the many invites sent to users actually depleted value for users on Facebook rather than enhance it.

They did add value to a certain group of users otherwise we would never have had this segment of 50-something women petting puppies on the internet. But in doing so, they spammed another whole set of users, repeatedly sending irrelevant invites.

Facebook itself, over time, has taken progressively greater measures to curb the level of spam on its network. Zynga obviously gained a lot of traction because it was among the first to show up at the party. The restrictions started coming into play only later. And with the restrictions, Facebook has become sub-optimal for user acquisition of this sort.

Facebook was never optimized for social gaming

The viral invite mechanic on which this model of social gaming works fails because of two reasons:

1. Not every user on Facebook is genuinely interested in playing or trying a social game. That’s not the primary use case of the network, since Facebook is first a publishing platform and then a marketing platform. Good content goes viral on the platform because it adds value to the users, who are largely out there looking for good content. Facebook is optimized for good content, not for game invites.

2. The underlying network is based on real identities. As a result, users are more sensitive about spamming their friends and creating poor experiences for them. As with any other technology experience, users don’t necessarily differentiate negative behavior (spam) from day one and gradually acquire the sophistication to avoid spamming.

The social invite mechanic should be native to the underlying platform

This is where Asian gaming platforms are fundamentally different. A characteristic that differentiates some Asian gaming networks like GREE (TYO:3632) and DeNA (TYO:2432) from other social gaming companies is the fact that their user acquisition and cross-promotion is built on a native gaming platform. Users often have an avatar-based gaming identity rather than their real identity. With gaming being the core function of the platform, the risk of spam gets mitigated. And since people aren’t their real selves on the platform, the propensity to mass-invite will be that much higher.

The current breed of social gaming companies that have optimized and perfected the art of acquiring users on Facebook and other non-native viral platforms are now faced with an additional challenge (since Facebook’s policy tightening) with which they have no experience: Building a user acquisition platform where they own the users across games. Companies which have already built a user acquisition engine on a native platform have a headstart here.

The smaller screen problem and ‘unbundling’

Every web-first company seems to be up against this challenge. Mobile gaming comes with three unique problems:

1. The small on-screen real estate limits monetization options.

2. Mobile has a history of unbundling horizontal platforms into vertical services. Facebook.com is a single web destination for multiple use cases (communication, hosting pictures, sharing stuff, playing games etc.). But Facebook itself has multiple mobile apps for communication, photos, etc., and faces stiff competition from services like Instagram (pre-acquisition) which would not have been a direct competitor in a desktop/web-only world. This unbundling could also raise challenges for social games which depend heavily on cross-promotion and could come in the way of porting users from one game to another.

3. Mobile brings a different game dynamic with it as well. Mobile games tend to have high engagement per session. Social games on Facebook, on the other hand, have lower per-session engagement and are often played more in maintenance mode where a user logs in, completes a few tasks and then finishes up.

Being mobile-first, Asian gaming giants again have a headstart, especially in the region’s more mature mobile markets. GREE’s acquisition of OpenFeint clearly marked their intentions towards investing in a cross-platform mobile gaming experience.

It’s ultimately the money, honey!

Social gaming ARPUs globally are still not at the level that they are in Japan. Despite the fact that Zynga had 10X the number of users that GREE had in late 2011 (Zynga was still on a roll), GREE had higher quarterly revenues and both GREE and DeNA had more than 10X the profitability of Zynga. Of course, this all works very well when you’re targeting the affluent Japanese market. But two significant reasons for Zynga’s low profitability have been it’s high customer acquisition spend and the 30 percent revenue share with Facebook. Acquisitions spends are controlled to a much greater extent on an owned, native platform, which contributes to DeNA’s high profitability.

Of course, there’s always the off-chance that the rest of the world may be different. Social gaming, mobile gaming, and virtual goods were all first implemented on a commercial scale in Asian markets, particularly in two two markets (South Korea and Japan) characterized by high disposable income, technologically-advanced consumers and high average online spends. Both markets, however, have historically been very insular. Korea’s Cyworld hasn’t really broken much ground in its global expansion quest. And Japanese consumer tech products continue to be very inward focused.

The challenge for these companies lies in their ability to execute in foreign, especially non-Asian, markets with different customer tastes. Can they figure out the global consumer? If they do, they might just ring in a new phase of international success for Japanese internet companies.

GREE booth, 2012 Tokyo Game Show

It looks as though Japanese gaming giant GREE (TYO:3632) is continuing its activities overseas, this time with investment in chat service eBuddy, based in the Netherlands. The Next Web cites Emerce.nl, reporting that this investment actually occurred a few months back, but had not been reported until recently.

We got in touch with a GREE representative who confirmed that there was indeed a minority investment, although further details haven’t been disclosed.

Most of GREE’s high profile activity of late has been in the US and North America, making a push to partner with game developers there. As for Europe, the company does have subsidiaries in the region with offices in London and Amsterdam.

It has been interesting to watch GREE’s overseas expansion in contrast to its rival DeNA, which has been pushing its Mobage platform hard in China over the past year. Interestingly, GREE appears to be hiring for a number of positions in Beijing, so perhaps it will follow suit with a more focused China push sometime soon. The company announced 12 additional languages for the GREE platform yesterday, including traditional and simplified Chinese — although this had been known to be in the works for some time now.

When we last checked in on eBuddy, the company had about 250 million chat users worldwide, including 4 million in India, and 2 million in Indonesia.

GREE booth at Tokyo Game Show 2012

Japanese gaming giant GREE (TYO:3632) is announcing a new developer program that aims to support independent developers in the United States.

It’s called ‘GREE Loves Indies’ and the plan is to offer developers and small studios access to GREE’s resources and expertise. The company will also hold an ‘Indie of the Month’ contest where developers are invited to submit their games to be considered for a four to six week launch and release support campaign. Applications for the first contest are due on November 2nd.

Over the next few days at GDC Online in Austin, Texas, developers can visit GREE to find out more about the program. Eros Resmini, the SVP of developer relations and marketing at GREE International noted:

[Indie developers] are responsible for pushing the limits of creativity and driving innovation within the mobile industry and I feel we have a responsibility to give them the tools and knowledge they need to work their magic.

More Indie Partners

GREE also recently announced a number of new indie development partners in North America for its mobile gaming platform. Those partners are:

• Fifth Column Games, Inc – Located in San Francisco, this game studio was founded in 2011 and has developed games for console, mobile, web, and PC.
• Enders Fund, Inc – A mobile game studio also based out of San Francisco. TriviaThis will be among one of its first titles to be featured on GREE’s platform.
• Fathom Interactive – Based in Vancouver, Fathom is a developer and outsourcing partner. It hopes to have its popular Sky Pirates title on GREE’s platform by the end of the year.
• FreezeTag, Inc – This California-based developer creates casual games for mobile, PC, and Mac. Its Party Animals title will launch for GREE sometime this year.

Tokyo Game Show 2012

I had a chance to visit the Tokyo Game Show over the weekend, and as many have pointed out the event is seeing smartphones and social games moving in on territory previously dominated by console gaming.

Looking at the breakdown of games by platform, you can see that smartphones by far make up the lion’s share of games exhibited [1]. Perhaps part of this is due to the fact that you can display a mobile game in far less space than you can a console game. But surely it represents a passing of the torch as well, as exhibitors like Nintendo and Microsoft no longer have dedicated areas at the game show [2].

Like last year, GREE was the biggest exhibitor of mobile social games with a huge booth that was perhaps only rivaled by game developer and operator Gloops. Readers may recall that on Thursday, Gloops struck a deal with DeNA to bring new titles to North America, Europe, China, and South Korea in the coming years [3]. GREE still drew much attention with prominent displays for games like Wacky Motors, Metal Gear Solid, and the upcoming title War Corps.

[Download image version of this chart]

And while the big names in mobile gaming were certainly fun to see, I was pleased to see game companies from other countries around Asia representing at the show. An Indonesian booth highlighted notable gaming companies from that country (Agate Studios and Altermyth), and even Malaysian game companies made an appearance.

Chinese game developers were in attendance, but not particularly active with a number of empty chairs in front of most of the booths I visited [4]. Surprisingly, Taiwan had an active presence with Art and Mobile Entertainment leading the way showing off a number of games across many platforms.

There was also a big representation of student game developers at the show, and we hope to follow up with them soon and bring you more details on what they are working on, particularly in the space of mobile games.

You can find more photos from the 2012 Tokyo Game Show over on our Facebook page.

Japanese social gaming giant GREE (TYO:3632) has announced today that it has acquired San Francisco-based mobile game company App Ant.

App Ant is the game developer behind Dino Life, which GREE launched back in May as the first Android title for its North American studio. The metrics for that game so far appear less than stellar [1]. A wise friend recently pointed out to me that the game did launch on iOS in Canada, but has yet to launch on iOS elsewhere – ostensibly after not testing as well as expected. You can see the app metrics for the Canada app store below.

But GREE likes what it sees from App Ant, whose members will now join the Japan-based company at its San Francisco studio. GREE International’s CEO Naoki Aoyagi noted:

[App Ant has] continually impressed us with the quality of its engineering, art, and overall product. They share the same strong passion GREE has for mobile social gaming and we genuinely respect their dedication to evolving the gaming industry. […] With our constantly growing and evolving mobile game market, having such exceptional talent on board to build great experiences for the latest hardware is a huge priority for us.

We’re not certain what the terms of this acquisition were, but its not the first time for GREE to splash some money on picking up a US-based game developer. Readers will likely remember when the company spent the huge sum of $210 million for Funzio earlier this year, also based in San Francisco.

Dino Life, Canada iOS app store, from AppAnnie.com

At GREE's botth at Tokyo Game Show 2011

• SkyVu Entertainment: Named one of the top developers of 2012, this is the studio behind Battle Bears which boasts 18 million downloads. SkyVu will release ‘Battle Bears Zero’ exclusively with GREE.
• InfiniDy: Based out of Kitchener-Waterloo in Canada, this social games developer will be brining its new Happy Zoo Park title to the GREE platform. Happy Park, its freemium theme park game, already has more than 5.3 million downloads worldwide.
• Oceanside Interactive: This L.A.-based social gaming company focuses on RPGs for iOS, Android and Facebook. Its title MyDinos uses the GREE Global platform.
• Gamenauts: Its game Ninja Fishing will be coming to the GREE platform in Q4 2012. It has over 7 million players worldwide, and might be a fun supplement to my previous Ninja Farm addiction (a title from CyberAgent).

Regarding the partnerships, GREE International’s senior director of developer relations Ben Chen noted:

There is no doubt that the indie community is responsible for pushing innovation in our industry, and we’re incredibly excited to see our new partners excel.

Serkan Toto also pointed out yesterday that Konami’s Dragon Collection, one of GREE’s biggest hits, is now on GREE Global via an English version over on the Canadian app store. However, he’s skeptical about its chances for success outside Japan.

There’s an interesting piece from Kyoto news today about how many Japanese companies are increasingly moving headquarters or operations to Singapore. With a more favorable tax rate, Singapore is, so far, the preferred outpost for many Japanese companies looking to expand beyond domestic borders.

This is a phenomenon that we have written about many times in the past with the number of big name internet companies setting up shop in Singapore over the past few years.

Perhaps most notable is the Crosscoop facility on Robinson Road, apparently the default landing ground for Japanese companies in Singapore, which hosts DeNA [1], GREE, Recruit, and @Freaks. KDDI’s advertising unit Mediba is one of the latest companies to set up shop there in October of last year. It also hosts startups as well, which is a big attraction given that Singapore is such a friendly place for entrepreneurs.

Back in May of this year, advertising giant also Dentsu announced the opening of a Singapore office with the goal of expanding into Southeast Asia’s mobile advertising markets.

Kyodo cites SMU’s Toru Yoshikawa who explains some of the advantages of being in Singapore:

Japanese companies want to globalize their operations by hiring staff with diverse cultural backgrounds, and while Japan may have highly competent engineers and managers, they don’t have much experience operating in multicultural environments, so Singapore is an ideal location because they can hire English-speaking staff.

As nearby Southeast Asian markets continue to grow, we can expect to see more companies take advantage of Singapore’s unique geographical and cultural position.

Japanese mobile gaming company GREE (TYO:3632), or more specifically, its subsidiary GREE Advertising, today is announcing a partnership with French mobile affiliate network MobPartner.

For developers on the GREE Platform, this will bring new promotion tools and user acquisition services courtesy of MobPartner and its network of mobile affiliates (see chart below from GREE). The CEO of GREE Advertising, Tatsuhei Asanuma, noted in the announcement:

By matching MobPartner’s mobile ad capabilities and ad network with GREE’s expanding global reach, developer community and user base, we’ll be able to help deliver new products faster, and to more people than ever.

While MobPartner is a French company, its reach is indeed global claiming to extend to 100 million users as of this March, and with a network of 100,000 publishers.

Earlier today we also heard that GREE is one of three new members of the Entertainment Software Association, in addition to China’s NetDragon and Mad Catz Interactive.

Here’s a fun application that we got wind of on this Friday evening. Dabkick is a photo sharing app which doesn’t let you share to everyone, but rather just to a single friend. Once you pick some photos to share, you can then choose a friend to initiate a photo session with.

Once the session starts you simply flip through your photo collection on your iPhone and your friend will see this slideshow on their phone in real time. There is a little bit of lag, I found, but the features here are pretty cool. You can chat in-app, or you can press some buttons to send messages like winks or laughs. There’s even a ‘dude’ button which I really enjoyed [1].

What’s interesting here is that the photo session takes place in the web browser on the receiving end. Your friend receives a URL where they can view that photo slideshow. After the session ends the photo slideshow is gone. So your friend doesn’t download the photos, they just get to see them for a short time. This function could actually come in handy for pro photographers who want to show their work to clients.

The app has just launched, and is supported with minority investment from Japanese social gaming giant GREE (TYO:3632). The founder and CEO of Dabkick, Balaji Krishnan, noted in the announcement:

Simple things like showing photos instantly to my non-tech-savvy parents or allowing my wife to show me a photo of something when she is out shopping becomes much easier when you can link up and experience those moments together. Our goal is to bring people closer by creating an experience that we would normally get only from in-person interactions.

If you’d like to give Dabkick a try, you can download it from the app store. Currently it’s only available for the iPhone. Check out their demo video below.

GREE booth, Tokyo Game Show

Japanese mobile social gaming giant GREE (TYO:3632) is today announcing that it will establish a wholly owned subsidiary in Vancouver called GREE Canada, Ltd. This will help the company with its North American plans, as it can coordinate with its other office in the region, GREE International, which is located just to the south in San Francisco.

Readers may recall that this is not GREE’s first venture into the Canadian north, as it was just back in April that the company announced a minority investment in Vancouver-based IUGO Mobile Entertainment. We’re not sure how this relates to today’s news, and have inquired with GREE to find out if there’s a connection. Update: A representative tells us that while they are not directly related, both are strong steps that strengthen their foothold in the North American market.

GREE has launched a number of titles targeting the North American market already, its first game Zombie Jombie has surpassed a million downloads and appears to have charted reasonably well on the top-grossing charts. And just last month the company had its global release for Gang Domination, a social card game from Gameloft.

(UPDATED: PriceArea has raised series A funding, not series B.)

We just received word that PriceArea, the largest price comparison search engine in Indonesia, just announced that it has raised an undisclosed amount of Series A funding. This new round brings the valuation of the company to ‘a couple of million’ hinted Andry Suhaili, the CEO of PriceArea. Among the investors in this round are GREE Ventures and Sony’s So-net which marks their first investment in Indonesia. The plan is to use the additional funding to expand PriceArea’s current operation and marketing activities.

The company, which was founded back in April 2010 and launched the following May. PriceArea raised its first seed round from East Ventures [1], and so far has around 22 employees (around nine are engineers). The company also plans to make a major push into the Southeast Asia market by customizing PriceArea products and services according to specific market demands in each country. Tatsuo Tsutsumi, partner at GREE Ventures, commented on the investment:

This round of funding is perfectly timed to grow PriceArea to meet the market demand and expansion plan to Southeast Asia.

Andry Suhaili, CEO of PriceArea, also added:

We are extremely excited to have two reputable companies such as GREE Ventures and So-net share in our vision. We look forward to tapping into their experiences and technology as we plan to take PriceArea into global expansion.

Currently PriceArea has 5,000,000 listed products and 75,000 merchants (online and offline retailers) which is massive compared to its competitors. Recently they also have introduced ITeCS, awards for Indonesia e-commerce players. With GREE and So-net joining forces on its board, PriceArea’s expansion to Southeast Asia should be a little easier.

Japanese social gaming giant GREE (TYO:3632) has launched its global website aimed at audiences outside of its home country, with its ‘Come Play GREE’ tagline being used to promote its lineup of mobile social games.

The company will be spending $50 million on an ad campaign targeting US audiences, where it has already launched titles like Zombie Jombie, which has topped a million downloads, Alien Family, and its first Android title Dino Life.

You can check out GREE’s promotional video below.

Meanwhile on Mobage

It should be noted that while GREE is pushing hard to win over North America, the folks at DeNA have been making more inroads into the China market over the past six months, with a number of high profile partnerships under its belt already.

At home in Japan, DeNA has a clever promotional video of its own, a short TV commercial for its popular Rage of Bahamut game. It’s a really fun clip, one which I hope they can adapt for western audience (or even just subtitle it) as it reminds me of the old Godzilla monster movies.

[Via Pocket Gamer]

Game developer PopCap is following up on its phenomenally popular Bejeweled game – which has more than 500 million downloads worldwide thus far – with a sparkly, new Japan-only version called Bejeweled Legend. Released today for iOS and Android, it’s tied to the GREE (TYO:3632) social gaming platform and brings a pirate theme to the popular puzzle game.

We already know that Japan’s social/mobile gaming platforms are monetizing masters, so it should be no surprise that this new Bejeweled Legend is free and features a whole host of in-app purchase options. True, this isn’t the kind of card battle game that’s proving so profitable amongst Japan’s casual gamers right now, but expect some strategic jewel purchasing – from flame gems to hypercubes – to bring in a lot of loot for both PopCap and GREE.

To go along with the pirate theme, the game has has some sea-faring adventures and seven mythic creatures of the deep serving as end-of-episode bosses. It also promises all-new characters, music, and effects. This is the first time that PopCap has self-published a game in Japan, so the U.S. studio is clearly making an effort.

Inevitably, there’ll be some disappointment amongst global fans of the game that this is currently limited to Japan, both at the geotarded download and mandatory GREE login stages. But it’s very likely that Bejeweled Legend will eventually take to the high seas and become available internationally.

Just last month, PopCap made the same kind of maneuver to work with China’s Tencent to launch a special version of everyone’s favourite brain-munching monster game, which got the name Plants vs Zombies Great Wall Edition.

So, if you use the Japanese app stores and have a GREE login, grab Bejeweled Legend right now on Google Play, or it’ll soon appear on the iTunes store.

Serkan Toto, expert on social mobile gaming in Japan, has been kind enough to share with us a presentation that he gave recently on the success of social gaming giants in Japan, with specific focus on GREE (TYO:3632) and DeNA (TYO:2432).

He outlines 14 reasons why these companies monetize better than Zynga (NASDAQ:ZNGA), and given the fact that these companies have been so profitable so far, anyone involved in the social gaming space would be wise to pay attention.

The entire presentation is below (or available here on slideshare), and I encourage you to check it out in its entirety. I was particularly impressed by a couple of points though, most notably that up to 70 percent of the top 20 games on GREE and Mobage currently are social card battle games. Serkan notes that these titles are big money makers, and it will be interesting to see how much these companies push card battle games in their expansion abroad.

Indeed DeNA has already seen some success with Rage of Bahamut, as and GREE’s Zombie Jombie recently passed the one million download mark, which is not too shabby either.

The old guard of Japanese gaming, Nintendo, just unveiled new social features for its upcoming Wii U console. But its hard to imagine that its conventional console gaming business model can be as lucrative as what these two newcomers have brought to the gaming industry.

GREE, Tokyo Game Show

Our readers may recall that last year’s Tokyo Game Show was a coming out party of sorts for GREE (TYO:3632), as the company turned more than a few heads with its gigantic floor display. Now that E3 is just around the corner (June 5 to 7), and GREE has just announced what they’ll be showing off at the show.

GREE will be in the South Exhibit Hall showing off a variety of social mobile games and its new GREE global platform. Among the yet-to-be-released games that it will be exhibiting are Driland, a card battle game; Wacky Motors, a car racing title; Closet Wars, a fashion game from Crowdstar; a Resident Evil title from Capcom; and Gang Domination.

GREE has been making progress in its effort to break into the North American market, after doing so well initially in Japan. Its global gaming platform just went into open beta, and its first North American title Zombie Jombie recently cracked the one million downloads mark. Perhaps most notable of all in recent months was the company’s $210 million acquisition of San Francisco-based game developer Funzio one month ago.

But of course, as you probably have heard by now all is not entirely rosy for GREE and other Japanese social gaming companies these days, with government regulation of ‘kompu gatcha’ at home in Japan throwing its stock for a loop, as our friend Serkan Toto has explained here.

Japanese social gaming giant GREE (TYO:3632) has announced that its new GREE Platform is now officially in Open Beta, and developers can download the new platform SDK as of today. The company acquired Open Feint last year, but will be abandoning that name and encouraging developers to migrate titles on Open Feint over to the GREE platform.

The company says in its announcement that the new platform will be available in both English and Japanese, and there will be over 60 games launched by September of this year.

GREE has been steadily expanding through partnerships and acquisitions over the past year, most notably with its recent pickup of social game developer Funzio for the sum of $210 million earlier this month. GREE claims that its ever-growing network now reaches over 230 million users around the world.

Even more mobile partnerships… #

Mind Candy & GREE (photo: mindcandy.com)

The company has also just announced that it will be partnering with entertainment company Mind Candy to bring the very popular Moshi Monsters kids’ game franchise onto mobile devices via the GREE Platform. The game lets children adopt and raise virtual pet monsters online.

The partnership will result in two Moshi Monsters titles being released in Q4 2012. Michael Acton Smith, the CEO and founder of Mind Candy noted:

Our fans love tablets and smartphones so we’re really excited to take our much loved characters and stories to these new platforms. […] GREE has achieved phenomenal success and we’re looking forward to working with them on these two games.

Moshi Monsters already claims over 60 million registered users in 150 territories around the world, and this tie-up with GREE will certainly help the game expand even further.

Even with all the craziness surrounding ‘kompu gacha’ for Japan’s biggest social gaming companies, their businesses still keep chugging along. And one of the biggest players, GREE (TYO:3632), has hit a milestone with the first game produced by its North American studio, Zombie Jombie. The folks over at Gamebiz.jp have reported that the title has surpassed one million downloads in App Store.

We got in touch with GREE representatives and received confirmation that the game has indeed surpassed the one million downloads mark. We’re also told that Zombie Jombie was selected as one of Apple’s ‘New and Noteworthy’ games, and is in the top 10 grossing apps list for the US app store.

I was initially skeptical that a card-based title would do very well in the U.S. as that has been a genre that had really only proven itself for GREE in its home market. But a million downloads in two months is certainly a decent start for the game, I think.

If you’d like to give it a try for yourself, you can get it from the App Store. There’s a great walk-through of the game by YouTube user TheCodGamer2010 below as well.

On a somewhat related note, Rage of Bahamut from DeNA and Cygames hit number one of Google Play’s top grossing charts just last month. We’ve been seeing a lot of enthusiastic comments from readers about this one as well. If you’d like to learn more, you can check out our own review of Rage of Bahamut.

pictured: Kompu gacha explained in TV report

The Japanese mobile social gaming space has experienced quite a rollercoaster ride over the past week or so. It was one week ago today that GREE (TYO:3632) acquired game developer Funzio for the astounding sum of $210 million dollars. Its rival DeNA (TYO:2432 ) was ostensibly also feeling pretty comfortable in its fancy new digs with a top grossing Android title under its belt in Rage of Bahamut [1].

And then the proverbial poop hit the fan this week when a weekend report about a practice called ‘Kompu Gacha’ (which is used in GREE and Mobage games as well as those of other companies) indicated that Japan’s Consumer Affairs Agency saw it as a violation of law [2]. Kompu Gacha encourages players to buy a series of items, promising the possibility of later winning a very rare prize.

On Monday in the wake of this report, the stock of GREE, DeNA and many other companies (including Konami, CyberAgent, and Bandai Namco) took a collective nose dive to the tune of $3.8 billion in market cap. Serkan Toto, as usual, is providing great commentary on this space, noting yesterday that GREE and DeNA stabilized yesterday, only to dip again today, GREE taking the worst of it, dropping 9.64 percent.

In the middle of all this, both GREE and DeNA have released their their financials for the third quarter over the past two days, showing that the two gaming giants are – if nothing else – making crazy amounts of money. DeNA’s quarterly net sales totaled $529 million (up 32 percent on the same time in the previous year) while GREE’s net sales were $580 million (up 182 percent from a year before) [3].

So what about Kompu Gacha? Both companies are reportedly going to back away from the practice. DeNA’s president noted in an earnings briefing that the company is to gradually phase out Kompu Gacha from Mobage Games. When we got in contact with DeNA directly this evening, a representative essentially pointed out that its business is far from a one-trick pony:

Social games are not finished products but services. So even if we are to phase out complete gacha, we can implement many other types of in-game events and game mechanics, and we have the know-how.

Late this evening, DeNA also released a note on its website saying that the consortium including itself and GREE, as well as NHN, CyberAgent, Dwango, and Mixi have all agreed to phase out Kompu Gacha by the end of the month in titles they develop and operate.

Personally, I can’t help but wonder if the Kompu Gacha mechanism is such a lucrative practice, will we see it turn up in many games outside of Japan? And will other countries struggle to regulate it as well?

For us here on the sidelines, it’s certainly more than a little confusing to watch this drama play out. Both GREE and DeNA are in the process of expanding their businesses abroad, and it will be interesting to see if they can translate their respective successes, or if either over-extends their capabilities.

[Image: matome.naver.jp/odai]

GREE is one of the companies under scrutiny

Japan’s Consumer Affairs Agency has reportedly concluded that the practice of ‘Kompu Gacha’ is a violation of the law. Kompu Gacha, or ‘complete gacha,’ requires that players collect a series of items before being rewarded with a rare prize – and the process can cost as much as hundreds of thousands of yen in some cases.

The story was reported over the weekend in Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun, citing “sources close to the agency,” and you can find the English version of that article here. The agency is to soon release its views about the issue, so stay tuned [1] for more information on that front.

The report says that the law in question is the “law on unjustifiable premiums” [2], and that kompu gacha is a questionable sales practice that takes advantage of user’s “gambling spirit.” It adds:

[T]he number [of complaints or inquiries concerning high charges for gacha games] surged to 58 in fiscal 2011. […] In one case, a middle school boy was charged more than 400,000 yen in just one month, while a primary school boy racked up 120,000 yen in charges over three days playing the games.

Serkan Toto has been watching this issue closely for some time now [3], and noted that some companies have already introduced restrictions in recent months in response to increased criticism, such as spending restrictions on minors. If you’re following this issue, keep an eye on his updates.

Blogger Chiyo Komoriya also wrote her thoughts on the news, noting that even though the practice of kompu gacha has been around for some time, it is only now being regulated (by officials who know little about the industry) because Japanese social gaming has become so popular and profitable.

The biggest players in Japanese social gaming were down on the Tokyo stock exchange in the wake of the news, with GREE (TYO:3632) and DeNA (TYO:2432) down 23.25 percent and 20.08 percent respectively.

Yomiuri Daily's explanation of 'Kompu Gacha'

It has been a big couple of days for GREE (TYO:3632) already with a couple of game dev partnerships yesterday, as well as the first Android title for its North American studio. But the company just dropped even bigger news moments ago, revealing via email that it has acquired San Francisco-based social/mobile game developer Funzio for no less than $210 million dollars.

Funzio is the creator of titles like Crime City, Modern War, and Kingdom Age, the latter reaching more than a million downloads in its first five days in Apple’s App Store since its April 19th launch. Ken Chui, the CEO and founder of Funzio noted in the announcement:

GREE shares our vision of a mobile world where people can play together wherever and whenever they are. We feel strongly that our experience in creating unique games for the mid-core market and GREE’s expertise in bringing the mobile games to the worldwide community is a perfect match.

Indeed if nothing else, the companies respective logos do look very nice together. But its certainly a big pickup for the Japanese mobile social gaming giant as it expands into overseas markets in an effort to reach its goal of one billion users, set by CEO Yoshikazu Tanaka.

This morning we mentioned that GREE (TYO:3632) had announced a couple of new game developer partnerships in CrowdStar and iWin. And now this evening the company is announcing a brand new title from its North American studio with the release of Dino Life, which is exclusively for Android.

GREE describes the game as free-to-play, where players can collect and breed dinosaurs as they expand their pre-historic tribe. You can hatch new species of dinosaurs, and cross-breed them into something entirely new. The company’s SVP of social games, Eiji Araki, noted in today’s announcement:

GREE is excited about the recent advancements in Google Play and its potential to expand the free-to-play ecosystem on Android Dino Life is our first Android title and exemplifies our commitment to offer unique gameplay mechanics, great social features and highly-stylized art in each game.

The artwork that we’ve received from GREE looks pretty sharp, as you can see below. It’s fun to see the kinds of games that GREE is putting forth from its various studios as their business expands across borders. Currently, in addition to the San Francisco office and its Tokyo headquarters, GREE also has offices in London, Dubai, Beijing, and Sao Paolo.

GREE’s new North American studio has already published a couple of iOS titles in Alien Family and Zombie Jombie.

Japanese mobile social gaming giant GREE (TYO:3632) has announced partnerships with a pair of prominent social game developers, in CrowdStar and iWin.

According to the announcement, the partnership with CrowdStar will bring the popular Top Girl franchise to the GREE platform. As we’ve mentioned before, GREE will be exhibiting at the E3 game conference this June, and it will be there that the company unveils Top Girl for the first time. That title, when it launched for iOS last year, hit a million downloads in just ten days. CrowdStar’s CEO Peter Relan noted the importance of coming to a strong global platform like GREE:

GREE and Crowdstar share the same idea that without social connections and a way for people to discover and interact in and around games, the industry will stall.

As for iWin, a successful online developer and operator of a casual gaming portal, it will be bringing two mobile social games based on popular TV shows exclusively to the GREE platform, in Deal or No Deal and 1 vs 100. CJ Wolf, the VP of publishing at iWin commented on the partnership:

As casual gamers’ play time shifts to mobile devices, iWin’s goal is to make our content accessible where gamers are playing. Our game show games are inherently social so iWin was seeking a partner that could provide a large social footprint on mobile and GREE was the best choice given their global community.

GREE is gradually expanding its games offering for the North American market, having recently launched the titles Zombie Jombie and Alien Family. Similarly, its chief rival DeNA is also making efforts to expand abroad, and recently announced some success with Rage of Bahamut hitting number one on the top grossing apps list for Android.

Gumi Korea CEO Gibon "Peter" Chang

Earlier today we noted GREE’s investment in IUGO Mobile International, the latest step from the social gaming company in its expansion from Japan to overseas markets. Similarly Tokyo-based Gumi [1], a Japanese mobile game developer in which GREE owns a 20 percent stake, also has its eyes set on expansion, making its first move today.

Gumi has announced the founding of Gumi Korea Inc, a fully owned subsidiary based in Seoul, dedicated to the development of mobile social games in South Korea and elsewhere [2]. Gumi plans to move ‘aggressively’ into the global market, and Korea is apparently phase one of that plan. Gumi Korea will move forward with Gibon “Peter” Chang as its CEO. He commented specifically on the potential that awaits the company in Korea:

The smartphone gaming market in South Korea is entering a rapid growth phase with 60 percent growth forecasted this year… At gumi Korea, we will focus on creating fun new mobile games for this market, with the same high quality standards as those produce by gumi in Tokyo.

The afore-mentioned GREE also has a subsidiary in Korea, and has already made a number of partners in the country. Likewise, its competitor DeNA has operations there too, and a key partnership with Daum for its Mobage platform.

Not long after investing in Tokyo-based game developers and HTML5 experts Wizcorp, Japanese social gaming company GREE (TYO:3632) has just announced a minority investment in Vancouver-based developer IUGO Mobile Entertainment.

According to the announcement, the partnership will mean that the two companies will be working closely on game development, taking advantage of IUGO’s three proprietary technologies: IUGO Games Library, IRender 3D Engine, and IUGO Mesh Social Game Engine. Hong-Yee Wong, the CEO of IUGO, commented on the partnership and what it means for the company:

Even though IUGO delivered our first game in 2003, I feel like we are just getting started because of the immense opportunities brought forward by the mobile lifestyle. Mobile gaming is soaring on a global scale, and our partnership will put us at the leading edge of this thrust."

In an interview with Business Insider yesterday, GREE’s CEO Yoshikazu Tanaka noted that his company has invested in 10 companies in the Asia region, but that they “are definitely focused on the North America and Canada are for investments” saying that it’s a good opportunity.

GREE is making a push in the North American market via its new offices in San Francisco and its global gaming platform. So far we have seen a couple of titles, Zombie Jombie and Alien Farm, and we can expect to see many more as the year progresses.

Earlier this week Tokyo-based game developer Wizcorp announced on its website that it had become a strategic partner of Japanese social gaming giant GREE (TYO:3632) [1]. By investing in Wizcorp, GREE is aiming to capitalize on the startup’s expertise in HTML5 game development, particularly its ‘Mithril’ game development engine.

For those of you who have not heard of Wizcorp before, you’re not alone. I initially confused it with game and toy maker WiZ Co., who is also based in Japan. So I got in touch with Wizcorp to find out a little more about why GREE would be interested in their Mithril platform [2].

Mithril is Wizcorp’s flagship technology, and I’m told that its main goal is to help game devs keep their attention on actual game development, without having to worry about things like databases, communication libraries, or data syncronization for example. By taking care of these issues, Mithril aims to let developers focus only on game-related challenges. A representative from Wizcorp also pointed towards its low operational cost, as well as its advanced deployment system which makes it “a breeze to run, manage, and scale.” These are the main competitive advantages that Mithril claims over similar solutions.

I’m told that the platform is currently being used to develop games, but Wizcorp couldn’t disclose any specific names of who is using it right now. But they do hope to tell us more on that front a few months down the road.

Wizcorp has been relatively low profile so far, but this partnership will surely make other companies look their way as well. A representative explained:

We firmly believe that our staff and technology are amongst the best in the industry, and our ambitions extend far beyond this partnership.

So yesterday it was announced that the joint venture between Japanese social gaming company DeNA and Namco Bandai, previously called BDNA, would be rebranded as BNDeNA. Putting the companies and their respective businesses aside for a moment, this is a truly atrocious name. I mean, capitalizing all letters in a company name is bad enough by itself. But look at that poor little ‘e’ in the middle!

I shouldn’t single out this example, as strange capitalization of company names seems almost epidemic in the Japanese tech space. Take for example Docomo, which refers to itself as ‘DOCOMO’ in all its press materials. This is perhaps not as bad as the camel-cased ‘DoCoMo’ which I (thankfully) don’t see written in the press as often as I used to. But there are lots of others too: Japan’s other social giant GREE (although this is short enough that it almost looks like an acronym), fashion startup COODE, and even the afore-mentioned Namco Bandai refers to itself as NAMCO BANDAI in its English press materials.

Here’s some food for thought from UX Movement:

When is it okay to use all caps? All caps are fine in contexts that don’t involve reading, such as logos and acronyms. But when your message involves reading, don’t force users to read it with bad shape contrast. The caps lock key is a key that designers should rarely use. In emails, using all caps is a sign of bad manners. In design, using all caps is a sign of bad readability.

And then there are companies who go all lower case. Take ad company ‘mediba’ for example, which never capitalizes its name. From an editor’s point of view this is a bit of a dilemma when you want to start a sentence with ‘mediba.’ It was also the case with DeNA’s ‘mobage,’ although I see now that the company itself now will use ‘Mobage’ in press materials.

Normally here on this blog, we’ll try to ‘normalize’ things if at all possible. In English after all, writing in caps often corresponds to shouting on the internet. And we’d prefer not to throw such jarring text at our readers if we can help it.

But of course, weird capitalization of company names is not unique to Japan. I can think of a few examples like eBay or iPhone off the top of my head. And don’t get me started on punctuation in a company name (I’m looking at you, Yahoo!). But while we write about companies the world over, Japanese companies are the only ones who we receive mail from, often insisting that a strange all/no caps name be adhered to in accordance with their wishes. Of course, most of them understand our dilemma when we explain it, and are pretty understanding about it.

Perhaps I’m making too much of this, and maybe there’s some good reason that I’m missing why many of these Japanese companies feel the need to be referred to consistently in all caps or no caps. If you’re a company with no aspirations of business outside of Japan, maybe it’s perfectly fine. But now that more and more companies are looking abroad, this is a minor (but important) style point that I hope aspiring startups will consider when promoting their brand.

Following up on Zombie Jombie, the first title from its North American studio, Japanese social gaming giant GREE (TYO:3632) has now released a second title, Alien Family. It’s a free-to-play adventure/farming game which also has a collection element to it as you gather your Alien family.

GREE’s Zombie Jombie appears to have performed respectably well since it was released, hitting the ninth spot in the free app rankings and 37th among top grossing apps.

It will be interesting to see how Alien Family and future GREE titles are received in North America, and whether or not its upcoming global gaming platform can be a success. It recently enlisted advertising behemoth Dentsu to assist with promotion of its global expansion.

Coincidentally, our friend Serkan Toto has just published his perspective on how Japanese social gaming companies GREE and DeNA will fare outside Japan. He has a number of reasons why he thinks they are “poised to fail” in their role as platform providers, but notes that he hopes he is wrong. Do check out his full presentation to find out more.

For those who would like to give a GREE game a spin, you can download Alien Family from the U.S. App Store. Regrettably, it’s not available internationally. Check out GREE’s promo video and images below:

Hot on the heels of its first game release from its North American studio, in Zombie Jombie, Japanese social gaming giant GREE (TYO:3632) is announcing a partnership with advertising company Dentsu (TYO:4324) to help with the promotion of its global business and expansion.

Dentsu, which has 168 offices around the world in 28 countries, will also be working with GREE in other business areas as well, according to today’s announcement:

GREE and Dentsu will expand into new businesses, such as venture investments in the mobile sector, co-development of advertizing business utilizing social media, among others, fully utilizing both of their strengths.

GREE also announced a partnership with fellow gaming giant Level-5 just a few days ago, saying that the two companies would be bringing three of its popular titles to the GREE global platform. The titles will be the RPGS card game Ni No Kuni: Daibouken Monsters, as well as Inazuma Eleven: Atsumeyouze, and Little Battlers eXperience.

It will be interesting to see exactly how successful GREE’s overseas expansion will be. The company certainly seems to be sparing no effort. It will also be attending the upcoming E3 gaming conference this June, by which time its new global platform, formed after its buying up OpenFeint, should be ready.

Japanese mobile social gaming giant GREE (TYO:3632) has just released Zombie Jombie, the first game to come from its North American studio. What’s interesting here is that GREE has opted for a card-based game, a genre that has worked well in Japan, but it remains to be seen if overseas audiences will be as enthusiastic.

The game let’s you ‘harness the power power of the undead’ using a deck of zombie cards, which you can trade with friends by taking advantage of the game’s social features. You can customize your own collection, and even fuse zombies together. GREE International’s SVP of social games comment on the game’s features:

Zombie Jombie invites gamers into a new and darker world where zombies are the good guys and it is humans you have to watch out for …. [It’s] an innovative game experience that ties together strong gameplay and great social features, an approach we plan to implement for all of our games moving forward.

The game is available for download from the App Store now if you’d like to take your Zombie army for a spin. Check out the trailer and pictures below.

Images:

DeNA onstage at Net Impact in Jakarta.

CyberAgent Ventures Indonesia held its Net Impact Conference less than a week ago in the Grand Hyatt hotel, Jakarta. It is CyberAgent Ventures’ initiative to help improve the local startup ecosystem and to share knowledge between successful foreign companies and Indonesian entrepreneurs.

Big names from Japan such as DeNA, GREE, and of course CyberAgent itself were present, while Vietnamese companies such as NCT, Teamobi, and VNG were also there – since CyberAgent Ventures has a big presence in that country. What was different about this event was that Tencent and Sina, two of China’s biggest social media companies, were speaking for the first time in Jakarta.

Some key takeaways:

DeNA has a $5 billion market this year which is very high growth. It took only four years to do that. Top 20 titles from Mobage, the DeNA platform, see $1 million per month in sales. The company aims to boost its platform by focusing on certain regions, like China. Yesterday it recruited Sina Weibo as a distribution and login partner on its Mobage platform.

GREE is pushing its Gree Global Platform (GGP), which is the culmination of last year’s OpenFeint acquisition. The new platform puts its social games, mobile social games, and social networking service on one platform across multiple devices. It has partners in China and Korea, as well as game developers like Ubisoft and Gameloft, to name just a few.

With 190 million users in more than 100 countries, GREE aims to formally launch the GGP in April or May of this year. The company also shared some know-how at the Jakarta event, such as how it bases every decision on raw data, and how it updates games every week (day or even night, since these are online games not console-based ones). It also aims to spread profitable game-building know-how over the years as it grows; it currently has 1,200 employees and more than 12,000 global developers.

Tencent is an all-round internet giant in China: it has news, email, a search engine, online games, QQ browser, and the QQ IM which is being used by 380 million folks across all major platforms. Tencent also has its eye on Indonesia with an aim to get people onto its Qute (a group messaging app for feature-phones that’s said to be better than WhatsApp or Blackberry Messenger), and also its QQ Browser for mobile.

Sina onstage at Net Impact in Jakarta. Click to enlarge.

Sina might have gotten lucky with its Weibo service, which started as a simple Twitter clone, but it’s definitely not just a regular clone. Grwoing to about 300 million registered users in just two years, it now encompasses online browser games, a virtual currency, online storage, brand pages, charity pages, online polling, and so much more. Sina representatives in Jakarta revealed they will have a $200 million developers fund, enhanced Weibo for enterprise, and a plan to build an online payment platform as well (as its virtual currency is now tied to third-party solutions).

Vietnam’s NCT shared about how it started as a music website and then evolved into a platform where you can find services like matchmaking, e-commerce, social networking, or even online payment. VNG is also doing what all the major social games companies are doing – making itself into a social games platform.

Net Impact was definitely one of the best conferences in Jakarta yet (I’m stressing that last word), but it definitely was not perfect either. Most of the keynotes felt like they were hard sells for the company, whereas what I think we need is to learn how we, as Indonesian entrepreneurs, can take in their experience and build our own success stories. Still, props to the CyberAgent Ventures team for holding this Net Impact Conference.

GREE’s Global Platform (GPP) looks to be the next big thing for the Japanese mobile gaming company. It has came a long way since first expanding out from Japan, with the most significant move undoubtedly its $100 million acquisition of U.S-based OpenFeint.

Unfortunately, for the OpenFeint faithfuls, the OpenFeint name will not be staying any longer after GREE launches its Global Platform, which is poised for sometime in Q2 this year. Yes, you heard that right: GREE (TYO:3632) will drop the OpenFeint name. We heard it a few moments ago from the company’s own Noritaka Kobayashi who revealed the news here at the CyberAgent Net Impact Conference in Jakarta.

The move will come as a suprise to many, but it does make sense, and it has been apparently months in the planning. GREE just can’t really have a global gaming platform with two fragmented services in two different parts of the world. Collectively, OpenFeint and GPP has over 130 million mobile gaming users.

But apart from what GREE is revealing to the assembled media here today, there isn’t much news about the its Global Platform though. So stay tuned for the big gaming fusion between Japan and the U.S. It should be quite an eye-opener.

GREE's CEO Yoshikazu Tanaka at event in Paris (photo @cedric)

Japanese social gaming giant GREE (TYO:3632) is announcing today that is is partnering with two big game publishers on titles for its upcoming global platform. The first is Ubisoft (EPA:UBI), who the company will work with to exclusively bring a new Assassin’s Creed title to the upcoming global GREE mobile platform. This is certainly a big-name addition for the company as Assassin’s Creed is one of the best-selling game franchises in the world right now.

The game is coming in December in both English and Japanese, with other languages to follow soon after. In its announcement, GREE says that it is committed to “delivering a new and innovative social gaming experience” to the franchise. It will be interesting to see how the social element is integrated here.

Assassin's Creed Altair's Chronicles

There’s not much doubt that a title like Assassin’s Creed is a big boost for the platform for North American and European audiences. Last week when GREE announced a number of partnerships with Chinese and Korean game developers, I was a little skeptical as to how the titles announced (particularly, the many Three Kingdoms games [1]) might fare overseas. Assassin’s Creed will certainly bring GREE more attention stateside.

The other big partnership that GREE is announcing today is with Gameloft (EPA:GFT). The two companies will work together on a new social title for smartphones called Gang Domination (see images below), which will arrive in June. This will be a social card game twist on Gameloft’s Gangstar franchise, the latest installment of which – Gangstar Rio – has done well, helping the publisher to strong financial results late last year. The company’s president Michel Guillemot commented on the new project with GREE:

Social card games are considered the most popular social games in Japan. ‘Gang Domination’ will be Gameloft’s first social card game, and we’re thrilled to work on this project with a leading player in this market such as GREE.

GREE’s two announcements come just a day after the company’s domestic rival DeNA made two big announcements of its own, landing a high-profile title of its own in Infinity Blade Cross, as well as finally launching its Daum Mobage platform in Korea.

Yoshikazu Tanaka on the right.

Dressed casually in sneakers, dark blue jeans, and a simple black outfit, he looked very much like your typical tech geek. Perhaps it was the warm Singapore weather that inspired the casual dress. The young founder of GREE (TYO:3632), Yoshikazu Tanaka, shook my hand, handed me his business card and bowed like any other Japanese professional. I managed a clumsy bow in response, in admiration of his sincere and polite attitude. We had met once before in Beijing last year, but our conversation hadn’t lasted long.

Many know that Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg is one of the world’s youngest self-made billionaires. But Yoshikazu Tanaka amassed a whopping $1.6 billion fortune by the young age of 32. He is now 34.

His entrepreneurial story dates back to 1999 when he was a fresh graduate. Prior to GREE Inc. Tanaka didn’t have any experience building a startup. But he was always a keen admirer of great Internet businesses. He told me that the the Japanese version of Wired magazine was his source of inspiration.

“Back then, I witnessed Amazon, eBay, and Yahoo’s phenomenal growth in the Internet world. That got me very inspired and motivated to do one myself,” said Tanaka. But like most aspiring entrepreneurs, he didn’t jump straight in. “I wanted to work and gain some experience first,” he noted.

Hungry to learn and succeed

Tanaka graduated in March 1999 from Nihon University. Within a month he was recruited by So-net Entertainment Corporation, which is a Sony Internet service provider affiliate. That job didn’t last very long, though.

“I enjoyed my time at So-net, but I thought I needed a change to a more startup-like environment and culture. So-net is too large of a corporation to learn how to run a business,” Tanaka remarked. After ten months at So-net, on February 2000, Tanaka joined Rakuten as employee number 50.

When Tanaka joined, Rakuten — now one of the world’s biggest and most successful e-commerce sites — was just a three-year old venture. As he explains, it provided him with “very good exposure in managing a startup.” At Rakuten, Tanaka had a chance to challenge his abilities:

“Besides my technical role, on Rakuten’s range of products, I also managed online product reviews, the blog network, and affiliate marketing… the marketing stuff,” he explained.

Tanaka spent a good four years at Rakuten and was part of the team that witnessed the Japanese e-commerce giant listed on JASDAQ in April 2000, the rollout of Rakuten Travel in 2001, the acquisition of Infoseek Japan K.K and DLJSecurities in 2003.

All this would prove useful when Tanaka started his own empire.

Billion-dollar hobby

While Tanaka was focused on his job at Rakuten, he was also a keen observer of what was taking place outside of Japan. In 2003, he was inspired by Friendster, the popular social network with a large number of users from both the US and Asia. Tanaka was fascinated by the online social networking concept as the possibilities and growth seemed limitless. That sparked his entrepreneurial instinct, and he began to wonder if there was any way to bring the social networking concept to the Japanese market.

Around the end of 2003, I started doing the programming myself, developing the first version of GREE. It was just a hobby to me… And I only launched GREE as a social networking site on February 2004.

Success came pretty quick after GREE was first introduced to the public. The first version of GREE, as Tanaka explained, was a PC-focused social networking site.

After just one month, GREE had attracted 10,000 users. And by October 2004, it had more than 100,000. Tanaka says he didn’t spend a single dime on marketing, and that his startup became popular purely through word of mouth from its users.

The traffic brought Tanaka an unexpected problem though. Tanaka discovered that he needed to hire someone to manage his server to keep GREE up and running. His new network could no longer remain just a hobby. After tasting early success, Tanaka was determined to take the next step, and that necessitated that he quit Rakuten and channel all his energy towards building GREE. In December of 2004 he left Rakuten and began his journey as a full-time entrepreneur.

GREE Inc. is born

GREE was registered as a formalized business in December 2004, as soon as Tanaka left Rakuten. GREE Inc. was officially born.

To expand quickly, Tanaka needed fresh funds to hire talent. In June of 2005, Globis Capital Partners invested 100 million yen (about US$1.3 million at today’s rates) in his venture. The funding allowed him to hire and expand his office space. Tanaka reflected on his fund raising experience:

In 2005 and 2006, investors were looking out more for online search businesses in Japan. They were influenced by Google and Yahoo’s success. So some of them weren’t exactly comfortable investing in a social networking service.

Nonetheless, growth remained strong and GREE started to gain attention from Japanese telecom operators. In June 2006, GREE received investment from KDDI, amounting to 360 million yen (or about US$4.6 million).

As a result, EZ GREE was launched in November 2006 as the official mobile service for KDDI; it’s now known as ‘au one GREE.’ Three months later GREE became NTT Docomo’s official mobile networking service. And by March of 2007, GREE had hit the one-million-users milestone.

Mobile, the future of Internet

With such robust growth, Tanaka still wasn’t satisfied. He told me:

I always believed that the future of Internet is mobile. Back then I predicted that by 2010, the mobile market will be larger than the web market and that was why we wanted to build GREE to be a mobile-focused social networking service instead.

Even with all the funding and partnerships ongoing, Tanaka already had his mobile plans in the pipeline. However, it wasn’t just a mobile social networking service that Tanaka was planning.

Just social networking on mobile is boring. We wanted to introduce games to our users. And [gaming was] also planned as a business model for GREE.”

A few months after in May, GREE’s first game, Tsuri-Suta (Fishing Star), was launched. The idea of selling virtual goods via mobile games was inspired by PC games that were already employing the same business model in Japan, Tanaka explained.

Games and virtual goods turned out to be a gold mine business model for GREE. For fiscal year 2011, paid services (virtual goods and social games) reached US$700 million in total sales.

IPO and overseas expansion

In December of 2008, GREE was listed on Tokyo Stock Exchange’s ‘Market of the High Growth and Emerging stocks.’ In April of 2009, GREE hit 10 million users, and that figure doubled to 20 million just 14 months later, in June 2010.

In the same year, GREE moved to the first section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Business was great but still very much limited to within Japan’s borders. To bring GREE to greater heights, Tanaka knew that he had to expand his business abroad. And the two largest markets in the world, China and U.S, are certainly part of his plans.

In January 2011, GREE partnered with China’s Tencent to create a common API. Japanese developers on GREE who wish to target the Chinese gamers can now port their games over to Tencent’s platform with some localization support. It’s the same for Chinese developers who wish to build games for the Japanese market. So far, Tanaka says that two games were ported from GREE to Tencent and one game has gone the other way, onto GREE.

We treasure our partnership with Tencent, but at the same time, we are also working with independent game developers in China… For China, it is important for GREE to tap into that market.

But the deal that really thrust GREE onto the international stage was its $100 million acquisition of OpenFeint in April of 2011, which highlights the company’s intention to impact the U.S market. GREE is also constantly seeking out other businesses in the U.S with which to establish meaningful relationships. Could that be Facebook or Zynga? Tanaka explains:

We don’t have any plans to publish our games on Facebook. However, we’re searching for possible partnerships with Facebook… Not only Facebook but different companies around the world.

To date, GREE has overseas offices in China, Singapore, South Korea, the UK, Brazil, Netherlands, Dubai, and in San Francisco in the States.

The GREE global gaming platform

GREE’s global gaming platform is coming soon, sometime between April and June of this year. It promises to be a one-stop shop for the world to enjoy games on GREE. It will first be launched in English and Japanese, and 14 other languages will follow suit.

As you know, we have two platforms, the GREE and OpenFeint platform. So we will bring these platforms together, and it will be called the GREE platform. The brand will be only GREE after the global platform launch. All the good features on OpenFeint and GREE will be included onto one single platform.

GREE’s move to merge two platforms into one is a big step towards building a truly international social gaming platform company. The company also recently announced a number of partnerships with leading game developers in China and Korea to bring more games to its new platform. On the topic of going global, Tanaka told me that he is inspired by Japanese gaming console giant, Nintendo, which generates 80 percent of its revenue from overseas and 20 percent from the local market. Right now, Tanaka said that almost 100 percent of GREE’s revenue comes from the Japanese market. “We’re inspired to achieve what Nintendo has achieved in the global market,” said Tanaka.

GREE Group (GREE and OpenFeint) currently has more than 190 million users globally and will continue to press forward to “make the world a better place through the power of the Internet.” That is GREE’s official corporate message, but as Tanaka took the last sip from his coffee, he elaborated, showing that he really means it:

I think gaming is the biggest [form of] entertainment that we can have. However not everyone in the world is playing games. And for console games, there are only 200 million gamers out there. And you know, for people like you and us, you can’t really imagine, but there are people in the world who don’t have access to games even if they want to play. And I believe if you can play games on mobile, then everyone in the world who has a mobile should be able to play our games.

GREE area at Tokyo Game Show

Japanese mobile gaming company GREE (TYO:3632) has today announced multiple partnerships with leading social/mobile game developers in Korea and Greater China. The partnerships will result in 12 new iOS and Android titles coming to the new GREE platform when it launches later this year, we’re told between April and June.

Among the most prominent of these titles on the way is Punchbox’s Fishing Joy which recently celebrated its 30 millionth download just last month [1]. The complete list of companies and games coming to the new GREE platform are listed below:

Interestingly GREE says that these games will be first available in English, with Japanese, Chinese, and Korean languages “under consideration.” And while it’s great to see GREE increase its game offerings, we’ll have to wait and see how well these games created in Asia will be received in places like the US and Europe. Note that four of the games listed above are of the “three kingdoms” variety.

GREE also recently announced that it will be in attendance at E3 in Los Angeles this June. We expect that its global platform will be ready by then, and will be front and center at the show. After the company’s acquisition of Open Feint, there are now almost 190 million users under the GREE Group umbrella.

This distribution doesn’t come as a surprise since mig33 has 50 million users, with more than 30 million from Indonesia. Besides loving all things mobile, users are very young and very social — and I haven’t even mentioned their love for football.

Monster League, as explained in the announcement, is a world full of monsters where (strangely) football is everything. This football simulation game is a unique blend of football and Tamagochi, the handheld virtual pet simulation game. The main difference here is that you can train your monster to be a legendary football player. This Tamagochi-style twist on the game is a fascinating angle, and the characters are very cute.

Agate Studio has released a wide array of games to date, ranging from from Urban Fatburner, NyanyiYuk and Football Saga, to Sexy Witch and Smash Mania. They are a part of the mig33 Developer Program with GREE. They are one of the most successful game studios in Indonesia, founded back in 2009.