BUSINESS WEEK - Dec 6 - Gree, Japan’s second-biggest social-network, aims to have 1 billion user accounts in 3-5 years. The Tokyo-based company acquired Burlingame, California-based online-games network OpenFeint for $104M in April as it seeks to expand overseas. Gree has 150M user accounts globally, with overseas operations in nine countries.
by Kazuyo Sawa
See full article at Business Week
TECH CRUNCH - Oct 31 - GREE and Mobage, mobile social gaming platforms hugely successful in Japan, reported some big financial numbers today. DeNA's sales reached $457M for the second quarter of this fiscal, while operating income hit $203M. That translates into 28% and 13% YOY growth respectively. GREE is now expecting sales to hit $1.67 billion to $1.8 billion for the current fiscal (up 40-44.4% from the previous forecast), while operating profit is expected to land somewhere between $770 -900M (up 40-50%).
TOKYO TIMES - Sep 21- Female-oriented video games such as “otome” by Gree are the hottest thing for Japanese women. The video-game market in Japan already has a figure of $10.6 billion. An analyst says the market for female-oriented video games could amount to 20 billion yen ($26M) for the next five years.
TECH CRUNCH - Apr 21 - Mobile gaming startup OpenFeint, has been acquired by Japanese mobile gaming company GREE for $104M in cash plus additional capital for growth of the OpenFeint platform. OpenFeint provides a mobile social gaming platform for the iPhone and Android platforms. Combined, the GREE and OpenFeint gaming ecosystem will reach 100 M users worldwide and GREE will uses its own resources to accelerate OpenFeint’s growth. The joint company will soon opening offices in Beijing, Singapore and London and plans to double OpenFeint in size in 2011.
TECH CRUNCH - Apr 13 - Japanese mobile social gaming juggernaut GREE and mig33, a mobile community that’s especially popular in Asia, have just announced a cooperation with the potential to change the social gaming market in the region. Under the agreement, mig33 adopts the “GREE platform for smartphone”, which means that smartphone games that have been created using the technical specifications of GREE’s Japanese platform can now be easily ported to mig33, and vice versa. GREE and mig33 combined have ~70M users.
TECH CRUNCH - May 11 - Japan has two listed mobile gaming companies
with a multi-billion US-dollar market capitalization, GREE ($2.7
billion) and DeNA ($4.2 billion), with both companies offering services
in Japan only. But DeNA just yesterday rolled out MiniNation on the App
Store, a social network for the iPhone based around games and avatars
that targets a global audience. MiniNation started out with four games
in English, all of which are based on popular titles found on DeNA’s
Japanese social gaming portal, Mobage-town (which boasts 18M members).
The avatar system is already in place, and according to DeNA, the first
four games (Bandit Nation, Mini Solitaire, Mini BalloonHunt and Mini
NumberPlace) are just the beginning. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH
REUTERS -- Sep 8 -- From virtual clothes to
e-pets, Asians spend $5 billion a year on virtual purchases via
websites such as Qzone, Cyworld in South Korea and mobile-phone based
network Gree in Japan, according to Plus Eight Star. That's about 80%
of the global market for virtual products, it says. Qzone made over $1
billion last year with just 13% coming from advertising revenue. In
contrast, Facebook and Myspace depend on advertising to fund most of
their revenue. The evolution of virtual money in Asia is partly due to
a less developed online advertising market which drove Asian web
businesses to seek new ways to profit. Cultural issues are at play too.
Gaming is popular among adults in Asia, whereas in the West it tends to
be only for kids. FULL ARTICLE @ REUTERS
See all posts on Qzone See all posts on Facebook
See all posts on Cyworld See all posts on Myspace
See all posts on Gree
SNW -- Aug 26 -- Infinita, Japanese mobile market intelligence and
research company, has just released new reports on the top mobile
social networks in Japan - Mobagetown, GREE and Mixi. The reports are
available for $3,000 each for a company license; Infinita
also distribute them as a bundle for US$ 6,750. More info here http://infinita.co.jp/en/
THE JAPAN TIMES -- June 24 --Early last month, Mixi announced its
financial results and forecast for the year: Its profit would fall by
15% from the previous year, the first such decline in growth since the
company went public. The company is now opening its PC and mobile
platform to third-party developers, and new applications created by
them are expected to become available this summer. Mixi's move comes
amid the mobile-gaming boom among Japan's young generation. GREE,
Japan's third largest social network, saw the number of users to its
site more than double to nearly 10m, and its profit increased multiple
times over the past year on the back of popular mobile games created in
house. FULL ARTICLE @ THE JAPAN TIMES
* Cyworld, Korea: $200m in 2008 revenues, 22m registered users, valuation unknown.
* Mobile Game Town, Japan: $250m in 2008 revenues, 12.6m registered users, valuation $1.4 billion.
* Gree, Japan: $60m in 2008 revenues, 8m registered users, valuation $1.2 billion.
FULL ARTICLE @ VIRTUALGOODNEWS
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