Japan Digest: MySpace Japan office will close, ChuChu playlist matchmaker, and more

(1) It’s not a big surprise: MySpace Japan will close its office early this year, according to Japanese news site IT Media. According to the report, MySpace US will manage the Japanese version starting February 1, 2012.

(2) The ChuChu (meaning kiss kiss) Tune app is a “playlist match maker” that hooks up two musically likeminded individuals. Designed to “test out the chemistry between 2 iPhone users”, the app is available in English and Japanese.

(3) DeNA announced it has entered a strategic partnership with the Alibaba group, specifically Alibaba Cloud Computing (AliCloud).

(4) GREE added yet another payment method for virtual and avatar-related items in Japan. Starting last month, players using GREE on smartphones can pay via PayPal.

(5) According to Gamebiz, the social soccer card game, Konami’s J-League Dream Eleven, has just hit one million registered players.

(6) Tokyo-based social gaming company Klab is going international. KLab Cyscorpions is the name of the subsidiary that was launched in Singapore and will handle international smartphone game development for Klab in the future. Moreover, Klab is entering the venture capital business. The company’s newly launched subsidiary Klab Ventures has announced it will establish a VC firm together with major Japanese VC SBI Investment last December. In another news, Klab has ported its soccer-themed social game Captain Tsubasa to GREE.

(7) Fired up by healthy sales numbers last quarter, Konami is continuing to churn out social games: the company announced BE-BOP-HIGHSCHOOL for Mobage on feature phones.

(8) Tecmo Koei is now counting a total of five million registered players for their social games offered on GREE, Mobage, and Yahoo Mobage.

(9) Tokyo-based Index has announced the launch of MissionGate, which is “France’s first social gaming” platform, according to the company.

(10) Facebook Japan now boasts over 6 million registered users, if you believe the newest data coming from social media analytics service Socialbakers. To be more concrete, Facebook counts 6,267,540 registered Japanese members – again, according to Socialbakers.

(11) Social games on Facebook aren’t a big topic in Japan at the moment, but Zynga Japan announced it has translated one of the parent company’s biggest hits, Empires & Allies, into Japanese.

We thank nordicfactory for the flag image.