Japanese service lets you sign up for early releases of mobile games

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Ichihaya

Ichiyaha is a Japanese, mobile optimized web service that lets users sign up to play games which have yet to be released. It’s sort of like betali.st where you can sign up early for startup services. Ichihaya was released back in June, and is operated by CyberZ, a mobile advertising and marketing company in Japan. The company is a subsidiary of internet giant CyberAgent.

Ichihaya has content partnerships with over 40 app review sites and game portals, like Kamiapu (roughly translated as ‘god apps’), one of the major iPhone app review portals in Japan. Users can sign up by email using their Facebook or Google credentials. Once registered, they can choose games they find interesting, and will subsequently be notified with updates about that game. Ichihaya lets users download exclusive items for many games as well.

For game developers it’s a fast, sure way to reach potential fans. Ichihaya can also be used as a marketing tool by publishing game-related content, such as tips on how to master a certain game. By implementing the SDK for Force Operation X, an advertising solution tool provided by CyberZ, game data can be analyzed as well.

It’s only been a little over a month since its release, so we don’t see a whole lot of up-coming games yet. But for light game users, it’s a great place to keep track of soon-to-be-released titles. Ichihaya can currently be viewed on mobile browsers, but in the future a native app certainly would not hurt either.