The Quest To Consolidate Mobile Gaming Platforms in Asia

Mobile gaming platforms are largely dominated by Asian companies, thanks to giant mobile-centric markets including Japan, China, and Indonesia. Just to name a few of the major mobile game entities in the region, there are GREE, DeNA’s Mobage, Tencent, mig33, and many others who are working to get into this space.

A couple of years back, the mobile gaming platforms in Asia were very fragmented, and targeted only at their own countries. Things are more or less the same today, but many of the companies have just started to push for overseas markets, marking an important shift in the region.

We have a huge number of mobile users in Asia but unfortunately there is also a very fragmented audience. That’s just the nature of Asia, in many ways very similar to Europe.

We have a great diversity of languages and cultures, even when two Asian countries are just a river apart. The great diversity we experience in Asia will never change. But the recent partnership between several mobile tech companies in Asia could prove to be a solution to tackle this culture isolation problem. If you can’t change things, then embrace it. That is what it seems like to me.

I had a chance to discuss this issue last week with two very interesting people: GREE’s director of international alliance business operations, Daisuke Kobayashi, and mig33’s CEO and co-founder Steven Goh. From that we got a clearer picture on what’s happening in the Asia mobile gaming market.

As many of you know, GREE has a very strong partnership with Chinese company Tencent and it also has a strong relationship with mig33. So there’s a positive example for you: an alliance (at least as GREE as a bridge) of different mobile platforms – China for Tencent, GREE for Japan, and mig33 for Southeast Asia, which provides a wider user base for mobile developers.

800 million and still counting

As we wrote recently, this alliance helps mobile game developers to reach out to over 800 million users across the three major markets. The diversity of languages is solved as each company offers its own support to help localize and translate the games.

All in all, it provides mobile game developers a one-stop-shop to market their games to three different market groups. The experience may not be seamless for now – but the Tencent-GREE-mig33 alliance will make it easier for developers to build apps and monetize them across these three markets.

Looking at this alliance alone might be a little too myopic. That’s just three platforms in Asia, after all. So how about other mobile giants like DeNA? True enough and it’s pretty tricky, though. From what I can see, the Tencent-GREE-mig33 alliance is bonded strongly and wouldn’t do anything to erode the relationship. But Kobayashi did mention that when it comes to business, GREE is very much willing to work with any valuable partners. So I threw a question stating that Sina Weibo is currently on the rise and has also moved into the gaming space with Weibi, its virtual currency – would there be possible collaboration? (Note that Tencent Weibo and Sina Weibo are competitors)

I didn’t get a direct answer. But Kobayashi did say that both GREE and Tencent have a very close relationship. My gut tells me that a partnership between GREE and Sina (or any other Tencent’s rival) seems impossible for now as any such deal would strain its relationship with Tencent.