Battle Cats, the crazy mobile tower defense game from Japanese developer Ponos, has gradually worked its way up to become the top free iOS app in Japan, after its initial release back in November. The title recently upgraded to version 1.2, adding some special sales in-game which have likely helped its recent popularity. (Update: It looks like the game has been knocked to number two by ‘Like Me,’ a new portrait doodle app.) I’ve been a huge fan of this game from the outset, especially its very unusual sense of humor [1]. The variety of strangely named cats and enemies are so much fun, and if you haven’t played it yet I encourage you to check it out. Battle Cats launched on the Android platform at the end of 2012, and isn’t doing too bad on there either. Currently it’s the top ranked casual game on Google Play, and is ranked 13th overall. The game recently surpassed the 2 million downloads milestone, and now that its getting a little exposure in the number one iOS spot, I imagine that 3 million is only a couple of weeks away given its recent momentum. For a closer look at Battle Cats, check…
Battle Cats, the crazy mobile tower defense game from Japanese developer Ponos, has gradually worked its way up to become the top free iOS app in Japan, after its initial release back in November. The title recently upgraded to version 1.2, adding some special sales in-game which have likely helped its recent popularity. (Update: It looks like the game has been knocked to number two by ‘Like Me,’ a new portrait doodle app.)
I’ve been a huge fan of this game from the outset, especially its very unusual sense of humor [1]. The variety of strangely named cats and enemies are so much fun, and if you haven’t played it yet I encourage you to check it out.
Battle Cats launched on the Android platform at the end of 2012, and isn’t doing too bad on there either. Currently it’s the top ranked casual game on Google Play, and is ranked 13th overall.
The game recently surpassed the 2 million downloads milestone, and now that its getting a little exposure in the number one iOS spot, I imagine that 3 million is only a couple of weeks away given its recent momentum.
For a closer look at Battle Cats, check out our recent video demo below:
I should note that I’m still stuff on chapter 3, round 48. If anyone else is in a similar situation, feel free to share your codes here in the comments (Mine is yg2t0). ↩
Japanese social network Mixi (TYO:2121) just launched a new photo service named Nohana (meaning ‘wild flowers’ in Japanese) targeting parents with small children. This move makes a lot of sense considering that the early users of the social network, which launched way back in 2000, are now a little older and likely to have children of their own. The app is surprisingly simple and is completely separate from Mixi proper. After signing up, you can invite your family members by entering their phone numbers. Once this is done, you can upload or take photos with the iOS app [1] and then every month users (in Japan) can receive a free (90 yen shipping fee not included) printed photo book. The first book of each month is always free, however each additional book costs 525 yen and there is free shipping for orders above 1,050 yen (about $11). Nohana is Mixi’s answer to our modern habit of frequent photo-taking, but never having enough time to organize and print them. With this solution, families can share their photos with grandparents or other relatives who may live far away. Mixi’s official total monthly active users was 14 million as of September 2012, with…
Japanese social network Mixi (TYO:2121) just launched a new photo service named Nohana (meaning ‘wild flowers’ in Japanese) targeting parents with small children. This move makes a lot of sense considering that the early users of the social network, which launched way back in 2000, are now a little older and likely to have children of their own.
The app is surprisingly simple and is completely separate from Mixi proper. After signing up, you can invite your family members by entering their phone numbers. Once this is done, you can upload or take photos with the iOS app[1] and then every month users (in Japan) can receive a free (90 yen shipping fee not included) printed photo book. The first book of each month is always free, however each additional book costs 525 yen and there is free shipping for orders above 1,050 yen (about $11).
Nohana is Mixi’s answer to our modern habit of frequent photo-taking, but never having enough time to organize and print them. With this solution, families can share their photos with grandparents or other relatives who may live far away.
Mixi’s official total monthly active users was 14 million as of September 2012, with about 8.6 million of those on smartphones (see interactive chart below). And the most active users on the social network are people in the 20 to 24 demographic accounting for almost 30% of the total users. That’s followed by users ages 25 to 29 at 20%, and 30 to 35 at 14%. Ostensibly many users from these segments should benefit greatly from a service like Nohana.
Mixi currently runs two major business: its social network, plus the online job posting site, Find Job. The company recently shut down its short-lived subscription fashion commerce, Petite Jete, which was targeting young female users. Under what was likely the correct assumption that young female struggled to find casual work fashion, the company did succeed in gaining over a million users. However, the business was not as big as they expected.
In Japan, the photo book market is getting pretty crowded with competitors from Fujifilm and startups like Tolot. Lets stay tuned to see if this new venture, Nohana, will go as they hope — or suffer the same sad fate as Petite Jete.
Japanese carrier NTT Docomo (NYSE:DCM) has just announced that it has surpassed 10 million LTE subscriber milestone. This comes after the company topped the five million subscriber mark back in August of 2012. Docomo initially launched its ‘Xi’ LTE service back in December of 2010, much earlier than its rivals Softbank and KDDI, both of which launched their own LTE services in September of last year respectively. However, according to a recent global LTE report from OpenSignal.com, Docomo’s LTE network lags behind its competitors in terms of speed. Softbank boasts 16.2 Mbps, and KDDI is close behind at 14.8 Mbps — but the report says that Docomo’s speeds were by far the slowest at 5.5 Mbps. Nevertheless, Docomo appears to be collecting customers at a reasonable enough speed, as you can see in our interactive chart below. Download image version of this chart
Japanese carrier NTT Docomo (NYSE:DCM) has just announced that it has surpassed 10 million LTE subscriber milestone. This comes after the company topped the five million subscriber mark back in August of 2012.
Docomo initially launched its ‘Xi’ LTE service back in December of 2010, much earlier than its rivals Softbank and KDDI, both of which launched their own LTE services in September of last year respectively.
However, according to a recent global LTE report from OpenSignal.com, Docomo’s LTE network lags behind its competitors in terms of speed. Softbank boasts 16.2 Mbps, and KDDI is close behind at 14.8 Mbps — but the report says that Docomo’s speeds were by far the slowest at 5.5 Mbps.
Nevertheless, Docomo appears to be collecting customers at a reasonable enough speed, as you can see in our interactive chart below.
See the Japanese version of this article It has been a while since I last spoke to the folks from Rovio, the Finnish company behind the wildly popular Angry Birds mobile game. But I recently had a chance to catch up with a few members of their flock in Tokyo, as the company gears up to open a new office in the Japanese capital, likely this spring. And while it might make for a more dramatic story to say that the company is making a furious push for Japan, that’s not the case. In fact quite the opposite. They are taking it slow, and that’s how they want it. I would argue that Rovio’s Angry Birds has achieved the kind of pop culture icon status not really seen since the days when Mario Bros revolutionized gaming. But the company realizes that if it wants to permeate uber-cute Japan, which has a culture of firmly established brand icons like Hello Kitty, Anpanman, and yes, Nintendo’s Mario Bros, they need a long term game plan. Peter Vesterbacka, ‘Mighty Eagle’ [1] at Rovio explains: We want to figure out how to build a proper presence that lasts – not just for the next…
Right to left: Peter Vesterbacka, Antti Sonninen, Henri Holm
It has been a while since I last spoke to the folks from Rovio, the Finnish company behind the wildly popular Angry Birds mobile game. But I recently had a chance to catch up with a few members of their flock in Tokyo, as the company gears up to open a new office in the Japanese capital, likely this spring. And while it might make for a more dramatic story to say that the company is making a furious push for Japan, that’s not the case. In fact quite the opposite. They are taking it slow, and that’s how they want it.
I would argue that Rovio’s Angry Birds has achieved the kind of pop culture icon status not really seen since the days when Mario Bros revolutionized gaming. But the company realizes that if it wants to permeate uber-cute Japan, which has a culture of firmly established brand icons like Hello Kitty, Anpanman, and yes, Nintendo’s Mario Bros, they need a long term game plan. Peter Vesterbacka, ‘Mighty Eagle’ [1] at Rovio explains:
We want to figure out how to build a proper presence that lasts – not just for the next year or two. We want to be a leading entertainment brand, one that’s more Japanese than many of the Japanese [brands].
But at the same time, they recognize that the business models in Japan leave much room for innovation and disruption. And while the company has been active on the ground in Japan making deals with local partners, they still haven’t really made a significant marketing push in the country. I asked if they’d ever consider television ads in Japan, as that’s a common tactic among the major internet companies here – but Peter says they would likely do something else. Rovio always takes a somewhat different approach in its marketing, he notes, and that’s likely to be the case in Japan as well. Of their existing merchandising partnership with Sanrio, the makers of Hello Kitty, he explains:
It’s always important to have the best possible local partners, because we can learn a lot from them. This was the same reason we wanted to work with LucasArts on Star Wars [2].
I’m told that the downloads that Rovio is seeing from Japan still have a long way to catch up with neighboring Korea, as smartphone penetration still has much room to grow in Japan. This is another reason why playing the long game in the country might be a wise idea, because a all-out marketing push at this time could indeed be premature.
But in the interests of giving locals an idea of what Rovio and Angry Birds are all about, they recently published a sort of Japanese language primer about what Angry Birds is all about (pictured right). Antti Sonninen, Rovio’s country director in Japan, points out that the site launched just a few weeks back. This is actually a common tactic for digital companies bringing a new digital product into Japan. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn – all have done similar things. They hope to answer many of the basic questions about Angry Birds here, including profiles of the different birds, as well as an explantion of in-game items.
Meanwhile in nearby China the Angry Birds brand has truly taken flight. I’m told that in a recent survey of 1,000 people that about 94% were familiar with the Angry Birds brand. The company has never been too upset about the IP infringements that usually accompany expansion into China, because it’s only a precipitate of passion for their product. Without going into too many details about their upcoming plans in the country, Peter says with a smile that “there’s a lot going on in China.”
Currently the company has a headcount of about 550 people, with 90 percent of those in Finland. But from what I can tell, the team is very adept at spreading their message, focusing their energies in the right places at the right time. Peter was recently in Russia where Rovio hopes to open activity parks in the next year, as well as push their new Angry Birds branded cola.
Looking at other top mobile games in comparison, there aren’t many that can even come close to what Angry Birds has done in terms of building such a recognizable and iconic brand. It will be interesting to see if this long term strategy works for Rovio, not just in Japan but across the globe.
If I recall correctly, I believe this is the actual title on his name card. Fun stuff. ↩
See our Japanese report on this story Japanese social gaming giant GREE (TYO:3632) and Yahoo Japan (TYO:4689) are announcing [1] today that they will establish a joint venture for development of social games for smartphones. The initiative is tentatively called GxYz [2] With 200 million yen (about $2.16 million) in capital dedicated to the venture, this solidifies a partnership that was first announced back in November of 2012. Yahoo Japan is the most popular web portal in Japan, and GREE is looking to tap into that audience, funneling traffic from the smartphone version of the site to social games on GREE. The gaming company also hopes that those users can use Yahoo Wallet to pay for content on GREE. GREE and Yahoo Japan announced back in December that they would be co-sponsoring the Tokyo 2020 Olympic bid. For more details, see GREE’s announcement in English and in Japanese. ↩ We’re really glad that this is tentative. ↩
Japanese social gaming giant GREE (TYO:3632) and Yahoo Japan (TYO:4689) are announcing [1] today that they will establish a joint venture for development of social games for smartphones. The initiative is tentatively called GxYz [2]
With 200 million yen (about $2.16 million) in capital dedicated to the venture, this solidifies a partnership that was first announced back in November of 2012. Yahoo Japan is the most popular web portal in Japan, and GREE is looking to tap into that audience, funneling traffic from the smartphone version of the site to social games on GREE. The gaming company also hopes that those users can use Yahoo Wallet to pay for content on GREE.
Last week we mentioned that the mobile card battle game Dark Summoner from publisher A-Team (TYO:3662) had surpassed 5 million downloads worldwide on the iOS and Android platforms. So far the title has been doing well on the top grossing app charts in both its home market and in the US. For those of you who have yet to check it out, here’s our quick video walk-through of Dark Summoner. The game isn’t really all that much different than other mobile card battle games in my view. Rage of Bahamut is a similar game, although obviously a lot more popular [1]. While I wouldn’t go so far as to call these games horrible, they do require a little bit of time to get into, and could certainly use more of an explanation for beginners. I’m curious to hear if any of our readers are playing Dark Summoner, and if you are, please leave your thoughts in the comments. Are these card battle games all the same to you? Or do they each have something unique to offer? Let us know. (And feel free to drop me a line in-game as well [2]!) We recently spoke with Cygames, the developer of…
Last week we mentioned that the mobile card battle game Dark Summoner from publisher A-Team (TYO:3662) had surpassed 5 million downloads worldwide on the iOS and Android platforms. So far the title has been doing well on the top grossing app charts in both its home market and in the US.
For those of you who have yet to check it out, here’s our quick video walk-through of Dark Summoner. The game isn’t really all that much different than other mobile card battle games in my view. Rage of Bahamut is a similar game, although obviously a lot more popular [1]. While I wouldn’t go so far as to call these games horrible, they do require a little bit of time to get into, and could certainly use more of an explanation for beginners.
I’m curious to hear if any of our readers are playing Dark Summoner, and if you are, please leave your thoughts in the comments. Are these card battle games all the same to you? Or do they each have something unique to offer? Let us know. (And feel free to drop me a line in-game as well [2]!)
We recently spoke with Cygames, the developer of Rage of Bahamut about the process of bringing that game to global users. You can read that article in its entirety here. ↩
My ID is 1459947259. You can share yours in the comments if you like. ↩
Having surpassed the 100 million user milestone, NHN Japan’s popular chat application Line has been a great example of the social potential that lies in mobile. Currently in Asia, it seems that each major region has its own local favorite. For example Korea has KakaoTalk, and China has WeChat/Weixin. Japan’s choice is — overwhelmingly — Line. With about 41.5 million out of its 100 million users in Japan, that means that nearly everyone who has a smartphone in Japan is on Line, since smartphone penetration is said to be about that same total. In comparison, KakaoTalk has about 9 million users in Japan right now, making it a distant second. For those of you who have yet to try Line, check out our video demonstration above of its major features below, showing a few of the many reasons why Japan thinks it’s so great. As you can see, one of the major innovations of this app – in my view – is how it has leveraged chat as a platform to distribute its others mobile apps and services. NHN Japan is expected to make a strong international push with Line in 2013, aiming for as many as 300 million to…
Having surpassed the 100 million user milestone, NHN Japan’s popular chat application Line has been a great example of the social potential that lies in mobile. Currently in Asia, it seems that each major region has its own local favorite. For example Korea has KakaoTalk, and China has WeChat/Weixin.
Japan’s choice is — overwhelmingly — Line.
With about 41.5 million out of its 100 million users in Japan, that means that nearly everyone who has a smartphone in Japan is on Line, since smartphone penetration is said to be about that same total. In comparison, KakaoTalk has about 9 million users in Japan right now, making it a distant second.
For those of you who have yet to try Line, check out our video demonstration above of its major features below, showing a few of the many reasons why Japan thinks it’s so great. As you can see, one of the major innovations of this app – in my view – is how it has leveraged chat as a platform to distribute its others mobile apps and services.
NHN Japan is expected to make a strong international push with Line in 2013, aiming for as many as 300 million to 400 million users.
For more information on the growth of Line, please check out our interactive Line Timeline which chronicles its growth from its launch back in 2011 up until the present day.
See original story in Japanese Tokyo-based app developer YoutFit recently released an application called Japan Style, with the aim of bringing Japan’s latest fashion trends to the world in a magazine style. Its content will be updated every month, and its target readership will be the Asian region. So far it’s available in English and traditional Chinese. In its first edition it features products from Zozotown.com, the global version of Japan’s largest fashion e-commerce site. The app will show you fashionable shops, beautiful scenery, highly-rated restaurants, and other spots where you can experience Japanese youth culture. New content every month is not very frequent, but they might pick things up a bit in the future as they step up their marketing. Japan Style thinks that users can even use this application as a mobile travel guidebook. They want the app to be an information hub that introduces Japanese fashion spots to foreign visitors in Japan. The app is available for free over on Apple’s App Store.
Tokyo-based app developer YoutFit recently released an application called Japan Style, with the aim of bringing Japan’s latest fashion trends to the world in a magazine style. Its content will be updated every month, and its target readership will be the Asian region. So far it’s available in English and traditional Chinese.
In its first edition it features products from Zozotown.com, the global version of Japan’s largest fashion e-commerce site. The app will show you fashionable shops, beautiful scenery, highly-rated restaurants, and other spots where you can experience Japanese youth culture.
New content every month is not very frequent, but they might pick things up a bit in the future as they step up their marketing. Japan Style thinks that users can even use this application as a mobile travel guidebook. They want the app to be an information hub that introduces Japanese fashion spots to foreign visitors in Japan.
The app is available for free over on Apple’s App Store.
Yahoo Japan (TYO:4689) has just released a very clever application called Face Stealer. It’s a fun camera app that lets you choose from an assortment of masks, including the Mona Lisa, US president Barack Obama, and a few others. I gave the app a quick run through, trying out the Obama mask and dog mask, and it works pretty well — although it is a little bit spooky (see my video above). Interestingly, users can also create their own masks to add to the list, simply by taking a photo of your friend and then wearing their face as a mask. Or you can select photos from your camera roll to create masks from. While posing in your favorite mask, you can take shapshots to share to Facebook and Twitter, or even video to share to Facebook and YouTube. It’s a fun little novelty photo app which I encourage you to try, especially if you’re feeling a little presidential. You can get it for free over on Apple’s App Store.
Yahoo Japan (TYO:4689) has just released a very clever application called Face Stealer. It’s a fun camera app that lets you choose from an assortment of masks, including the Mona Lisa, US president Barack Obama, and a few others. I gave the app a quick run through, trying out the Obama mask and dog mask, and it works pretty well — although it is a little bit spooky (see my video above).
Interestingly, users can also create their own masks to add to the list, simply by taking a photo of your friend and then wearing their face as a mask. Or you can select photos from your camera roll to create masks from.
While posing in your favorite mask, you can take shapshots to share to Facebook and Twitter, or even video to share to Facebook and YouTube.
It’s a fun little novelty photo app which I encourage you to try, especially if you’re feeling a little presidential. You can get it for free over on Apple’s App Store.
One of the biggest Japan-related tech stories from 2012 was the success of Cygames’ social card battle game Rage of Bahamut on DeNA’s Mobage network. Whether or not Japanese social games can succeed in markets abroad is a very interesting question, and Bahamut so far is perhaps the most convincing evidence to date that they can. With over 10 million users around the world, Rage of Bahamut has been an unexpected success, and a fixture atop the iOS and Android top grossing charts for the majority of 2012. While the folks at DeNA couldn’t disclose exactly how profitable Bahamut has been, they did proudly refer to it as “one of the most valuable apps in history.” Of course, the mobile gaming space is still young, but the feats of Bahamut and its developer Cygames, both at home and abroad, are certainly impressive. DeNA was impressed too, picking up a 20% stake in Cygames back in November of 2012 for the price of $92 million. I recently got in touch with some representatives from Cygames to find out more about the process of bringing Bamahut to markets outside Japan. Cygames’ Yuito Kimura was one of three directors, along with Akihiro Iino…
One of the biggest Japan-related tech stories from 2012 was the success of Cygames’ social card battle game Rage of Bahamut on DeNA’s Mobage network. Whether or not Japanese social games can succeed in markets abroad is a very interesting question, and Bahamut so far is perhaps the most convincing evidence to date that they can. With over 10 million users around the world, Rage of Bahamut has been an unexpected success, and a fixture atop the iOS and Android top grossing charts for the majority of 2012.
While the folks at DeNA couldn’t disclose exactly how profitable Bahamut has been, they did proudly refer to it as “one of the most valuable apps in history.” Of course, the mobile gaming space is still young, but the feats of Bahamut and its developer Cygames, both at home and abroad, are certainly impressive. DeNA was impressed too, picking up a 20% stake in Cygames back in November of 2012 for the price of $92 million.
I recently got in touch with some representatives from Cygames to find out more about the process of bringing Bamahut to markets outside Japan. Cygames’ Yuito Kimura was one of three directors, along with Akihiro Iino and Koichi Watanabe who originally developed the Rage of Bahamut concept. I asked him if they were confident that such mobile game genre like card battle games – which at that point were only really proven in Japan – could excel in overseas markets.
To be honest, not really. Back then, no card games like the ones popular in Japan had become breakout hits overseas. We really felt that there would be no way to know without giving it a try.
Cygames had ridden DeNA’s Mobage platform to success in Japan, and they thought perhaps the success of the partnership could extend overseas. DeNA executive Junichi Akagawa noted that they did think that “the desire to collect cool cards should be something universal,” and because of great artwork and past success in the Japanese market, they certainly thought it had the potential to be a hit internationally.
Since then, as we all know, Bahamut has been performed amazingly well on top grossing app charts, displaying surprising staying power (see charts below). Kimura says one reason for the games success is because they are always updating and improving it. In terms of making the game appealing for English-speaking users, there was some reworking of the design as well to appeal to Western audiences.
When I recently spoke to the folks from app metrics firm App Annie, one representative also cited outstanding marketing as one of the main reasons why Bahamut has done so well. But it’s important to note that the game was marketed differently abroad than it was in its home market. While the game was heavily advertised on television in and with out-of-home ads in Japan, a referral code system played a large role in helping the game spread in overseas markets. I can attest to this first hand actually, as anything that I’ve written about Bahamut in the past tends to attract a ton of comments from gamers who want to share their codes with others [1].
The game’s impressive artwork has surely helped Bahamut’s popularity among gamers, and I’m told that Cygames illustrator’s have previously worked on Japanese ‘AAA’ game titles [2]. In fact, a collection of artwork from the game was recently published as a book and is now available on Amazon Japan.
Kimura says that in total, the amount of people who worked on Bahamut is roughly the same as would be required for a console.
Whatever the reason for Bahamut’s popularity to date, it’s certainly a good example of a Japanese export thriving on a global scale. February 21st will mark the one-year anniversary of Bahamut on ‘Mobage West,’ so it will be interesting to watch Cygames moving forward with this and other titles for the international market.
Rick Martin
Yukari Mitsuhashi
Junya Mori
