news

Japanese card battle game ‘Dark Summoner’ tops 5 million downloads worldwide

Rick Martin 2013.02.12

Dark Summoner, a card battle game from Japanese game developer A-Team (TYO:3662), has broken through the 5 million worldwide downloads milestone. The iOS game has been around for about a year, and the Android version launched this past summer. According to social games expert Serkan Toto, the game has seen some impressive profitability as well. The English version of the title has managed to stay in the 100 top grossing app ranks for iOS, and on Google Play both the English and Japanese versions have been in the top 10 or 15 since their release. A commercial featuring AKB48’s Haruna Kojima is currently in heavy rotation [1] on television in Japan promoting an in-game campaign that runs until February 15th allowing you to get special monster cards. You can check out the commercial below. They also have a ‘making of’ video online, if you’re into that sort of thing. I’ve only just begun playing this game, but if you enjoy the card battle genre you’ll probably like this one too. It takes a little while to get into, but the process of collecting rare monster cards and sacrificing other cards to improve them is pretty addicting. I hope to give…

dark-summoner 2 — AKB48’s Haruna Kojima, for A-Team’s Dark Summoner

Dark Summoner, a card battle game from Japanese game developer A-Team (TYO:3662), has broken through the 5 million worldwide downloads milestone. The iOS game has been around for about a year, and the Android version launched this past summer.

According to social games expert Serkan Toto, the game has seen some impressive profitability as well. The English version of the title has managed to stay in the 100 top grossing app ranks for iOS, and on Google Play both the English and Japanese versions have been in the top 10 or 15 since their release.

A commercial featuring AKB48’s Haruna Kojima is currently in heavy rotation [1] on television in Japan promoting an in-game campaign that runs until February 15th allowing you to get special monster cards. You can check out the commercial below. They also have a ‘making of’ video online, if you’re into that sort of thing.

I’ve only just begun playing this game, but if you enjoy the card battle genre you’ll probably like this one too. It takes a little while to get into, but the process of collecting rare monster cards and sacrificing other cards to improve them is pretty addicting. I hope to give it a short video review once I spend a little more time with it. In the meantime, if you have any tips or advice for the game, feel free to share it in the comments.

See what I did there? ↩

news

How a Japanese hardware startup lets your phone and home appliances talk to each other

Masaru Ikeda 2013.02.12

On the way back home from a day at work, it would be great if you could turn on your air-conditioner to make your room comfortable for when you arrive. Or you might want to start filling your bathtub with hot water, so you can jump in without any delay. The Japanese government has decided to lift regulations for the remote control of consumer electronics, which had been established to avoid possible fires or accidents at unmanned places. But this change could motivate some Japanese startups to develop solutions that could may make our daily lives a lot more convenient. Pluto, a hardware startup comprised of three engineering graduate students from the University of Tokyo, introduced a smartphone-based remote control system for consumer electronics products this past December. Dubbed Pluto Station, it is available at Amazon Japan for 12,800 yen (about $140). The system consists of a smartphone-optimized web app (available on iOS 5.1+ or Android OS 4.0+) and a base station that connects to your home internet. It allows you access to all your remote-controllable appliances, after the station learns infrared signal patterns from remote controllers in advance. The team first developed a prototype in April of 2010, with…

On the way back home from a day at work, it would be great if you could turn on your air-conditioner to make your room comfortable for when you arrive. Or you might want to start filling your bathtub with hot water, so you can jump in without any delay.

The Japanese government has decided to lift regulations for the remote control of consumer electronics, which had been established to avoid possible fires or accidents at unmanned places. But this change could motivate some Japanese startups to develop solutions that could may make our daily lives a lot more convenient. Pluto, a hardware startup comprised of three engineering graduate students from the University of Tokyo, introduced a smartphone-based remote control system for consumer electronics products this past December. Dubbed Pluto Station, it is available at Amazon Japan for 12,800 yen (about $140).

The system consists of a smartphone-optimized web app (available on iOS 5.1+ or Android OS 4.0+) and a base station that connects to your home internet. It allows you access to all your remote-controllable appliances, after the station learns infrared signal patterns from remote controllers in advance.

The team first developed a prototype in April of 2010, with the aim of presenting at an annual campus festival at the university. Akito Gyoen, the head of the team, thought it would be unrealistic for people to replace all appliances with brand new, internet-enabled models. But when he first saw the iPhone 3G in 2008, he thought that the smartphone would be an ideal remote controlling device. That motivated him to start working on the new idea with the other two people.

There’s an atmosphere of hope in Japan nowadays that integrating physical devices with the internet will bring us some sort of the innovation we’ve never seen, and that it might also trigger a huge boom in digital craftsmanship.

(Via: Engineer Type, Career Design Center, Tokyo)

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Japanese app ‘Poica’ wants to carry all your point cards

Rick Martin 2013.02.11

Most people probably carry around a few point cards from some of their favorite retailers in their wallets. Although if you live in Japan, chances are that the number of point cards you carry is much higher. One startup hopes to remedy this by providing a smartphone application that lets you store all your point cards in one handy place. It’s called Poica, and so far its available for iOS and Android, but in Japanese only (although the interface is simple enough to figure out). The app hinges on its bar-code reader. For many point cards in Japan, a retail clerk would scan the bar code on the back of your card and then have access to your information. With Poica, you can scan the bar code from your favorite point cards, and then store that bar code on your phone so that you can show it to a clerk later on. The idea, obviously, is that you would no longer need to carry all those plastic cards in your wallet. You can see the application in action in our video demo below [1]. Poica also lets you organize your catalogued point cards into groups, such as book stores, restaurants,…

Most people probably carry around a few point cards from some of their favorite retailers in their wallets. Although if you live in Japan, chances are that the number of point cards you carry is much higher. One startup hopes to remedy this by providing a smartphone application that lets you store all your point cards in one handy place. It’s called Poica, and so far its available for iOS and Android, but in Japanese only (although the interface is simple enough to figure out).

The app hinges on its bar-code reader. For many point cards in Japan, a retail clerk would scan the bar code on the back of your card and then have access to your information. With Poica, you can scan the bar code from your favorite point cards, and then store that bar code on your phone so that you can show it to a clerk later on. The idea, obviously, is that you would no longer need to carry all those plastic cards in your wallet. You can see the application in action in our video demo below [1].

Poica also lets you organize your catalogued point cards into groups, such as book stores, restaurants, supermarkets, convenience stores, or electronic retailers. But technically speaking, I guess almost any card with a barcode would be acceptable. I even store some of my wife’s cards, just to impress her when I get dragged along shopping!

There are some drawbacks however. Not every point card in my collection comes with a bar code. Some of them just include a number, in which case, you cannot enter your card into Poica. But given that it’s a free app, it’s hard to really go wrong with Poica. In contrast, Card Bank – a similar application – costs 99 cents.

Poica just released a 2.0 version a few days ago with a few minor improvements, so now is as good a time as any to check it out.

Note that the bar code in my video is not an actual point card, but just the bar code from a random book. ↩

news

Japanese developer Nijibox continues Southeast Asia push

Rick Martin 2013.02.11

Japanese game developer Nijibox has launched a new title in its Fantasia series, Legend of Fantasia, on the Kotagames platform, targeting South- and Southeast Asia audiences. It will also soon be launching on the mig33 platform as well. Legend of Fantasia is a card battle game, and is not only available for feature phones (Kotagames is primarily a feature phone gaming platform), but is also optimized for smartphones as well. We’re told that the previous Fantasia titles on Kotagames, Costume Fantasia and Monster Fantasia, saw about 10 percent of revenue coming from smartphones. The folks at Nijibox expect this share to increase rapidly as smartphone adoption increases in the region. Interestingly, Legend has been especially localized for Indonesia, as it is available in not only English but in Bahasa Indonesia as well. The story is actually set in futuristic Jakarta, after ‘mysterious enemies’ have invaded the city. The Kotagames platform is growing fast, with 2.5 million users to date, and it’s interesting to see a Japanese game developer reaching out to Southeast Asian users by leveraging the platform. Konami also operates its Hisho Collection title on Kotagames, having launched in October of last year.

Japanese game developer Nijibox has launched a new title in its Fantasia series, Legend of Fantasia, on the Kotagames platform, targeting South- and Southeast Asia audiences. It will also soon be launching on the mig33 platform as well.

Legend of Fantasia is a card battle game, and is not only available for feature phones (Kotagames is primarily a feature phone gaming platform), but is also optimized for smartphones as well. We’re told that the previous Fantasia titles on Kotagames, Costume Fantasia and Monster Fantasia, saw about 10 percent of revenue coming from smartphones. The folks at Nijibox expect this share to increase rapidly as smartphone adoption increases in the region.

Interestingly, Legend has been especially localized for Indonesia, as it is available in not only English but in Bahasa Indonesia as well. The story is actually set in futuristic Jakarta, after ‘mysterious enemies’ have invaded the city.

The Kotagames platform is growing fast, with 2.5 million users to date, and it’s interesting to see a Japanese game developer reaching out to Southeast Asian users by leveraging the platform.

Konami also operates its Hisho Collection title on Kotagames, having launched in October of last year.

news

Smartphone penetration at 40% in Japan, survey says iPhone most favored

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2013.02.08

If you hop on any train in Tokyo, you’ll notice that everywhere you look people are using a smartphone. But what is the actual smartphone penetration rate in Japan? I recently stumbled upon some data by Impress R&D where the company surveyed 85,000 internet users about their smartphone usage. According to the survey, the smartphone penetration rate in Japan was 39.8% as of November 2012. That’s a significant increase from 22.9% in October 2011, and about a 10% increase from May of the same year, as you can see in the chart above. Most men and women in their 20s own smartphones: about 58.9% for men and 58.5% for women. Men in their 30s are the next highest demographic at 53.7%, followed by teenage boys. Japan loves the iPhone ¶ So what kind of smartphone do they use? It turns out Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone is the most popular with 31.5%. It’s followed by an assortment of Android runners-up: 12.1% have Sharp’s Aquos phone, 12% have Sony’s Xperia, 7.2% are using the Samsung Galaxy, and 6.0% opt for Fujitsu’s Arrows. In terms of operating systems, iOS accounts for 33.1% and Android makes up 66.4% — that’s a 5.5% increase for Android…

If you hop on any train in Tokyo, you’ll notice that everywhere you look people are using a smartphone. But what is the actual smartphone penetration rate in Japan? I recently stumbled upon some data by Impress R&D where the company surveyed 85,000 internet users about their smartphone usage.

According to the survey, the smartphone penetration rate in Japan was 39.8% as of November 2012. That’s a significant increase from 22.9% in October 2011, and about a 10% increase from May of the same year, as you can see in the chart above. Most men and women in their 20s own smartphones: about 58.9% for men and 58.5% for women. Men in their 30s are the next highest demographic at 53.7%, followed by teenage boys.

Japan loves the iPhone ¶

So what kind of smartphone do they use? It turns out Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone is the most popular with 31.5%. It’s followed by an assortment of Android runners-up: 12.1% have Sharp’s Aquos phone, 12% have Sony’s Xperia, 7.2% are using the Samsung Galaxy, and 6.0% opt for Fujitsu’s Arrows. In terms of operating systems, iOS accounts for 33.1% and Android makes up 66.4% — that’s a 5.5% increase for Android since last year for those of you keeping score at home.

Impress also asked about respondents’ use of social media. 38.7% responded that they use Facebook (compared to 25.4% last year) and 37.9% use Twitter (40.6% last year). According to another survey focusing on Facebook usage in Asian countries, Japan ranked fifth with 16.35 million estimated users [1]. Surprisingly, more and more people are using Facebook, and many of them appear to be moving on from Twitter.

The ever-growing mobile chat application Line place placed third with 33.9% of respondents using the service. Although in a recent MMD Laboratory survey of 670 respondents, Line came out as the most favored social service.

The most common usage of smartphones is texting or email according to 28% of respondents, followed by browsing the web and talking 14.2%, followed by social media at 13.2%.

SocialBakers currently puts the number at about 13.8 million, so take both these totals with a grain of salt. ↩

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Japanese mobile game ‘Battle Cats’ hits 2 million downloads [Gameplay Video]

SCORE 1,079

Rick Martin 2013.02.08

I’ve made no secret that I’m a big fan of Ponos’s ‘Battle Cats’. It’s a ridiculously fun tower defense game with an incredible sense of humor. After its initial release back in mid-November 2012, the title managed to hit 2 million downloads in just under three months, which is impressive as the game isn’t riding on any of the major mobile game platforms. While it started off sort of slow, Gamebiz.jp reports that the last million came in a recent 15-day span, making for a good growth spurt. The iOS game has ranked high in Japan (see chart below), and it has performed respectably well in some Asian countries too. For those of you who haven’t tried it yet, I’ve made a quick video overview (see above) of what the game is about. For a free-to-play title, Battle Cats offers up a pretty deep game play experience and I’m still enjoying it months after initially discovering it. Let us know what you think of the game in the comments, or if you have a tip or just want to share a friend code (which helps a lot in this game), feel free to do so.

I’ve made no secret that I’m a big fan of Ponos’s ‘Battle Cats’. It’s a ridiculously fun tower defense game with an incredible sense of humor.

After its initial release back in mid-November 2012, the title managed to hit 2 million downloads in just under three months, which is impressive as the game isn’t riding on any of the major mobile game platforms. While it started off sort of slow, Gamebiz.jp reports that the last million came in a recent 15-day span, making for a good growth spurt. The iOS game has ranked high in Japan (see chart below), and it has performed respectably well in some Asian countries too.

For those of you who haven’t tried it yet, I’ve made a quick video overview (see above) of what the game is about. For a free-to-play title, Battle Cats offers up a pretty deep game play experience and I’m still enjoying it months after initially discovering it.

Let us know what you think of the game in the comments, or if you have a tip or just want to share a friend code (which helps a lot in this game), feel free to do so.

battle-cats-ponos-sm — From AppAnnie.com

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Traditional Japanese art meets mobile: Paper iPhone cases from Kyoto

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2013.02.07

If you have ever visited Japanese variety stores like LOFT or Tokyu-Hands, you’ve likely seen the tremendous choice of iPhone cases. There are even websites like Case-Mate or Society6 where you can buy uniquely designed iPhone cases which are not mass produced. But I recently stumbled across one case that could be the first made of paper — or if not the very first, perhaps the sturdiest paper case. It’s called Musubi, which means “to tie” in Japanese. It’s a product by Kyoto-based manufacturer Suzuki Shofudo [1]. The case is made from a special robust paper using stereo-chemical paper pressing technology to mold it into the shape of an iPhone. To use it, you just need to place the paper case on the front and back of the iPhone, and then attach three stickers on the sides to hold the papers together. And that’s it, you’re done! The paper appears pretty thick although I’m not sure how much protection it would provide. There are five designs included in the Musubi package, allowing you to dress up your iPhone differently depending on your mood. The designs are traditional Japanese patterns that symbolizes relationships between people. For five cases, the price is…

If you have ever visited Japanese variety stores like LOFT or Tokyu-Hands, you’ve likely seen the tremendous choice of iPhone cases. There are even websites like Case-Mate or Society6 where you can buy uniquely designed iPhone cases which are not mass produced.

But I recently stumbled across one case that could be the first made of paper — or if not the very first, perhaps the sturdiest paper case. It’s called Musubi, which means “to tie” in Japanese. It’s a product by Kyoto-based manufacturer Suzuki Shofudo [1].

The case is made from a special robust paper using stereo-chemical paper pressing technology to mold it into the shape of an iPhone. To use it, you just need to place the paper case on the front and back of the iPhone, and then attach three stickers on the sides to hold the papers together. And that’s it, you’re done! The paper appears pretty thick although I’m not sure how much protection it would provide.

There are five designs included in the Musubi package, allowing you to dress up your iPhone differently depending on your mood. The designs are traditional Japanese patterns that symbolizes relationships between people. For five cases, the price is 1890 yen (about $20), which is generally less than the price of one iPhone case you can buy at a store. The cases are available for both iPhone 4/4S and iPhone 5.

The case can be bought online through the Suzuki Shofudo website if you’re in Japan, or if you’re passing through Kyoto, their store is here. We’ll let you know if they become available to overseas buyers. I’m sure that the demand for such a slick design would be pretty high!

More details can be found on their website (Japanese). See this pdf for starters. ↩

news

Japanese social games developer Alt Plus set to IPO in March

Masaru Ikeda 2013.02.07

Tokyo-based social games developer Alt Plus was approved on Wednesday to be listed on the Mothers market, a stock exchange for emerging companies. The gaming company was founded in May of 2010 by Takeshi Ishii who formerly worked at a VC firm as well a gaming companies such as Genki Co., Ltd. and AQ Interactive (acquired by Marvelous AQL in 2011). It has developed several gaming titles for the GREE platform, such as Bahamut Brave (not to be confused with Cygames’ Rage of Bahamut for Mobage), The Spirit of Fantasia, and Legend of Derbies King. In Q1 of 2012, the company saw 636 million yen (approximately $6.8 million) in revenue with a net profit of 166 million yen ($1.8 million). Some news sources say its flagship title Bahamut Brave was a very significant contributor to its sales. That title has acquired more than 1 million registered users as of last November. With this IPO, the company will raise approximately 1.1 billion yen ($11.7 million) and start introducing new gaming titles on the iOS App Store and on Google Play.

Tokyo-based social games developer Alt Plus was approved on Wednesday to be listed on the Mothers market, a stock exchange for emerging companies.

The gaming company was founded in May of 2010 by Takeshi Ishii who formerly worked at a VC firm as well a gaming companies such as Genki Co., Ltd. and AQ Interactive (acquired by Marvelous AQL in 2011). It has developed several gaming titles for the GREE platform, such as Bahamut Brave (not to be confused with Cygames’ Rage of Bahamut for Mobage), The Spirit of Fantasia, and Legend of Derbies King.

In Q1 of 2012, the company saw 636 million yen (approximately $6.8 million) in revenue with a net profit of 166 million yen ($1.8 million). Some news sources say its flagship title Bahamut Brave was a very significant contributor to its sales. That title has acquired more than 1 million registered users as of last November.

With this IPO, the company will raise approximately 1.1 billion yen ($11.7 million) and start introducing new gaming titles on the iOS App Store and on Google Play.

news

NHN Japan to subsidize Line app business, hopes to intensify international push

Masaru Ikeda 2013.02.07

Japanese several news resources report today that NHN Japan, most known for its wildly popular Line messaging app, is considering splitting the company into two entities corresponding to its business fields. Its online game portal Hangame is expected to be handled under the existing company but may change its name to Hangame Corporation (tentative), and the Line app, search portal Naver, and news portal and blogging platform Livedoor (acquired from Livedoor Corp in April of 2010) will be handed over to a new company called Line Corporation (tentative title). The split is expected to take place on April 1st, 2013. In the interests of intensifying international marketing efforts for the Line app, the company is also planning to set up a special company called Line Plus Corporation, which will be jointly funded by Line Corporation and NHN Corporation (the parent company in Korea). As many of our readers know, NHN Japan recently announced that Line has acquired more than 100 million users worldwide in January, and the company reportedly has intentions to grow the app to as many as 300 or 400 million by the end of 2013. In the social media space, that would put it in pretty exclusive company, likely…

Japanese several news resources report today that NHN Japan, most known for its wildly popular Line messaging app, is considering splitting the company into two entities corresponding to its business fields. Its online game portal Hangame is expected to be handled under the existing company but may change its name to Hangame Corporation (tentative), and the Line app, search portal Naver, and news portal and blogging platform Livedoor (acquired from Livedoor Corp in April of 2010) will be handed over to a new company called Line Corporation (tentative title). The split is expected to take place on April 1st, 2013.

In the interests of intensifying international marketing efforts for the Line app, the company is also planning to set up a special company called Line Plus Corporation, which will be jointly funded by Line Corporation and NHN Corporation (the parent company in Korea).

As many of our readers know, NHN Japan recently announced that Line has acquired more than 100 million users worldwide in January, and the company reportedly has intentions to grow the app to as many as 300 or 400 million by the end of 2013. In the social media space, that would put it in pretty exclusive company, likely making it a top five global social network.

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.

news

With new investment fund, GREE hopes to secure top developers

Rick Martin 2013.02.06

Gaming giant GREE (TYO:3632) has just announced a new $10 million fund targeting high quality game developers. As many of you may know, the first recipient of this fund, San Francisco-based MunkyFun, was announced in December. But today GREE is disclosing more details about the size of the fund, as well as their criteria for investment. I spoke with Jim Ying, who is the VP of publishing and partners and GREE International, and he pointed out that even though the company has a high quality internal studio system, they wanted to figure out a way to work with more standout external developers: We’re hopeful that we can hit the next blockbuster, and for our fund, that’s what we’re banking on. We’re not going to be looking at the long tail of developers, but rather the focus is on talent and developers with the potential to make a top 25 game. What’s in store for developers? ¶ With each investment planned to be of $1 million or more, GREE explains that this fund will provide more than just money. In addition the company plans to share access to its teams and tools with frequent calls and on-site visits, most directly with…

Gaming giant GREE (TYO:3632) has just announced a new $10 million fund targeting high quality game developers. As many of you may know, the first recipient of this fund, San Francisco-based MunkyFun, was announced in December. But today GREE is disclosing more details about the size of the fund, as well as their criteria for investment.

I spoke with Jim Ying, who is the VP of publishing and partners and GREE International, and he pointed out that even though the company has a high quality internal studio system, they wanted to figure out a way to work with more standout external developers:

We’re hopeful that we can hit the next blockbuster, and for our fund, that’s what we’re banking on. We’re not going to be looking at the long tail of developers, but rather the focus is on talent and developers with the potential to make a top 25 game.

What’s in store for developers? ¶

With each investment planned to be of $1 million or more, GREE explains that this fund will provide more than just money. In addition the company plans to share access to its teams and tools with frequent calls and on-site visits, most directly with the San Fransisco team initially. There will also be a portion of this fund set aside for marketing as well, which Jim explains could be the biggest impediment for game developers looking for the next big hit in the US market in particular:

In western markets that’s the biggest challenge, I’d say. Developers can build a great game but if they can’t expose it to players eyeballs there’s not going to be the support and the revenue generation that the game deserves.

While GREE relies heavily on expensive advertising methods like television in its home market of Japan, Jim points out that the US and most Western markets have not yet matured to that level. So far most of the advertising in the US is still on a CPI basis, and in terms of marketing dollars for this fund, that’s what the company is referring to.

Eyes South ¶

GREE has already made some inroads in South America with tie-ups with Brazil-based Vostu and Columbia’s Brainz. And this new fund focuses attention towards the region too, considering applicants not just from North America, but from South America. Jim adds, “There’s really a lot of creative talent down there. We want to make sure we capture the really talented developers.”

Moving forward in 2013, GREE is pinning high hopes on developers MunkyFun as well as Vancouver based IUGO. So it will be interesting to watch if they — along with any other partners GREE brings on board — can deliver the hit game that they are hoping for this year. Stay tuned!

Mobile

Japanese card battle game ‘Dark Summoner’ tops 5 million downloads worldwide

How a Japanese hardware startup lets your phone and home appliances talk to each other

Japanese app ‘Poica’ wants to carry all your point cards

Japanese developer Nijibox continues Southeast Asia push