Many of you may be familiar with CyberAgent’s Ameba Pigg (Pico) Virtual World, which after becoming popular in Japan was expanded globally via Facebook. CyberAgent claims a user base 3.5 million for Pico, which seems pretty good to me for an Asian company exploring foreign territory.
Today the company announced a spin-off Facebook game of sorts called World Chef, which will allow users to play using their Ameba Pico avatar. The game is a culinary variant of Ameba Pico world, with the same look and feel, but this time challenging users to manage restaurants around the globe.
Susumu Fujita, the company’s president & CEO explained:
We plan to increase momentum regarding our global business ambitions, using the release of World Chef to firmly establish a foothold in overseas markets.
We’ve recently mentioned how Japanese gaming companies are seeking new audiences overseas, and CyberAgent is one of the pioneers in doing this. I was a little skeptical that many of its 3.5 million users would be from Japan, but a representative tells me today that Japanese users only account for one percent.
27 percent of the game’s users come from Indonesia, which – as we have pointed out many times before – is one of the biggest nations on Facebook. The Philippines and the United States are right behind though, with 24 and 19 percent respectively.
The phenomenon of Japanese companies seeking overseas markets is an fascinating one to watch. And even though I’m not personally a fan of these Facebook games (there are not even any weapons or explosions or anything!) it’s good to see CyberAgent finding some success in its early attempts.
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