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tag Tokyo Game Show 2013

QuerySeeker helps app developers find the source of sudden downloads

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The Tokyo Game Show 2013 this past weekend showcased more than just games. Some companies were exhibiting solutions for game developers, one of the most interesting being QueryEye, a Nagoya-based startup that provides a marketing analysis solution. For mobile developers, if you see a sudden download surge for your app, you may have difficulty in figuring out what caused the spike. But QueryEye’s solution QuerySeeker gives you insight based on metrics and analytics that it collects. It continually crawls more than 45 million pages of popular blogs and app-focused websites. In this way you can figure out what social media post or online article helped give your app a boost. QuerySeeker was recently upgraded and so that now it can give you analytics in almost real time, updating every minute. It can be used for apps in a variety of app stores, like Apple’s AppStore, Google Play, KDDI’s au Smartpass, NTT Docomo’s dmenu, Amazon Kindle Store, the iTunes iBook Store, and Google Books. A single analysis package for an app is available for a monthly charge starting at 148,000 yen (about $1,500) not including the initial setup fee. The company was founded back in 2010 by Masashi Mizuno, known for…

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The Tokyo Game Show 2013 this past weekend showcased more than just games. Some companies were exhibiting solutions for game developers, one of the most interesting being QueryEye, a Nagoya-based startup that provides a marketing analysis solution.

For mobile developers, if you see a sudden download surge for your app, you may have difficulty in figuring out what caused the spike. But QueryEye’s solution QuerySeeker gives you insight based on metrics and analytics that it collects.

It continually crawls more than 45 million pages of popular blogs and app-focused websites. In this way you can figure out what social media post or online article helped give your app a boost.

QuerySeeker was recently upgraded and so that now it can give you analytics in almost real time, updating every minute. It can be used for apps in a variety of app stores, like Apple’s AppStore, Google Play, KDDI’s au Smartpass, NTT Docomo’s dmenu, Amazon Kindle Store, the iTunes iBook Store, and Google Books. A single analysis package for an app is available for a monthly charge starting at 148,000 yen (about $1,500) not including the initial setup fee.

The company was founded back in 2010 by Masashi Mizuno, known for contributing insightful mobile market analysis in Japanese tech media.

In the area of user retention, we’ve recently seen more than a few solution providers, including planBCD, Growth Push, Fello, and Korea’s 5Rocks. What QuerySeeker provides is somewhat different but helps developers find more efficient ways to market their apps and bring in more users.

Tokyo Game Show: The Mobile Players

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If 2012 was the year that mobile exhibitors overtook consoles at the Tokyo Game Show, 2013 was the year consoles rebounded, with Sony and Microsoft dominating the show. But there was still a strong mobile presence this year, perhaps the biggest exhibitor being GREE, once again shelling out for a large floor space. We spoke to their SVP of social games Eiji Araki, who explained why they feel the need to go big every year. But the standout newcomer this year at TGS was GungHo Online Entertainment, the developer of perhaps the world’s most successful game, Puzzle & Dragons, spotlighting their new 3DS version. They also previewed their upcoming title, Divine Gate, which is set for a September 30 release on Android. There were some notable absences from the mobile space however. GREE rival DeNA, as always, chose to skip the event. Colopl had a pretty large booth last year, but they took a pass on showing up this year. Casual game makers Line Corporation and BeeWorks, the creator of the wildly popular (and cute) Nameco franchise, were also no shows. We turned our eyes to the little guys in mobile this year, skipping over consoles entirely [1]. In the…

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If 2012 was the year that mobile exhibitors overtook consoles at the Tokyo Game Show, 2013 was the year consoles rebounded, with Sony and Microsoft dominating the show.

But there was still a strong mobile presence this year, perhaps the biggest exhibitor being GREE, once again shelling out for a large floor space. We spoke to their SVP of social games Eiji Araki, who explained why they feel the need to go big every year. But the standout newcomer this year at TGS was GungHo Online Entertainment, the developer of perhaps the world’s most successful game, Puzzle & Dragons, spotlighting their new 3DS version. They also previewed their upcoming title, Divine Gate, which is set for a September 30 release on Android.

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There were some notable absences from the mobile space however. GREE rival DeNA, as always, chose to skip the event. Colopl had a pretty large booth last year, but they took a pass on showing up this year.

Casual game makers Line Corporation and BeeWorks, the creator of the wildly popular (and cute) Nameco franchise, were also no shows.

We turned our eyes to the little guys in mobile this year, skipping over consoles entirely [1]. In the indie gaming area it was great to see companies like Okinawa-based SummerTime Studio, who has had a hit with their Ancient Surfer mobile game. We had a short discussion with their president, Hirotsu Takeyasu, which you can check out below.

Set up right next to them was Tokyo-based Link Kit, the maker of Samurai Defender, a game that we reviewed (and loved) earlier this year. Team Martini was also showing off Pechan, a really fun game for iPad where you have to push a juicer around the screen to crush fruit.

The game show also had an area dedicated to romance simulation games, featuring Eitarosoft, Voltage, and the oddly named ZZYZX. We did a short interview with Voltage (see video below), a prolific game publisher with over 50 titles to date. They plan to release one app every month, including some games that men can enjoy as well. This is one of those genres that is unique to Japan, but I imagine we will see more of these kind of titles creep into the global market (as we saw with card battle games), on an experimental basis if nothing else.

They came from beyond

Of course, the game show wasn’t just about Japanese game producers peddling their wares. There were also an abundance of foreign game makers parachuting into the country to show off titles here. As we mentioned yesterday, the one that most impressed us was Israel’s Nordau Creative with its Kazooloo augmented reality dragon fighting title.

But there was also an abundance of exhibitors from the Asia region, representing Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Tawian, Thailand, and Vietnam.

We also were quite impressed by the efforts of Russian developer and publisher Game Insight, who just recently launched a localized version of their Tribez game here in Japan for iOS. They win our unofficial award for the most enthusiastic game demo, corralling me and my colleague into a room and not letting us go until we had seen five of their games. They should get a raise.

And finally, making my naughty list this year is Square Enix, who once again had their “no photos” policy in effect at their booth, demonstrating that they still do not comprehend the concept of a “show”.

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The Nordau Creative team, featuring Kazooloo AR game at Tokyo Game Show

  1. There no shortage of coverage over on sites like Tktk and Tktk, so you can check that out there.  ↩

Israel’s Nordau Creative unleashes virtual dragons upon Tokyo Game Show

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While we were primarily focused on Japanese mobile game makers in our visit to the Tokyo Game Show, there were lots of foreign developers and publishers who brought great games to show off. The one that stood out the most for me was from Israeli studio Nordau Creative. They were turning lots of heads with their Kazooloo augmented reality dragon fighting game. This mobile title makes use of a large board that you place on the floor, which when viewed through the camera on your phone or tablet, appears as a sort of inter-dimensional vortex that spawns angry dragons for you to fight. Admittedly, these AR games can be somewhat gimmicky sometimes. But watching visitors dance around Kazooloo game boards shooting at floor dragons makes me think that this one has more potential than most. To try the game out for yourself, you’ll first need to get the app from the Apple App Store or Google Play and then purchase one of the available boards from the company website, which will then be shipped to you. They range in price from $14.99 for a mini-board, to $49.99 for larger sizes. If you’d like a visual demo of how the game…

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The Nordau Creative team, featuring Kazooloo AR game at Tokyo Game Show

While we were primarily focused on Japanese mobile game makers in our visit to the Tokyo Game Show, there were lots of foreign developers and publishers who brought great games to show off.

The one that stood out the most for me was from Israeli studio Nordau Creative. They were turning lots of heads with their Kazooloo augmented reality dragon fighting game. This mobile title makes use of a large board that you place on the floor, which when viewed through the camera on your phone or tablet, appears as a sort of inter-dimensional vortex that spawns angry dragons for you to fight.

Admittedly, these AR games can be somewhat gimmicky sometimes. But watching visitors dance around Kazooloo game boards shooting at floor dragons makes me think that this one has more potential than most.

To try the game out for yourself, you’ll first need to get the app from the Apple App Store or Google Play and then purchase one of the available boards from the company website, which will then be shipped to you. They range in price from $14.99 for a mini-board, to $49.99 for larger sizes.

If you’d like a visual demo of how the game works, you can check out their promo video for the game below.

After a rough year, GREE still goes big at Tokyo Game Show

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Back in 2011 the Tokyo Game Show was GREE’s coming out party, with the company planting a very big footprint in the gaming world – quite literally too, occupying about 10% of the entire floorspace. That exhibition was interpreted by some to be more political than practical, a show of power from a company poised to take over the world via smartphones. Skip to 2013 and we find that GREE, while still a mobile powerhouse, has had to scale things back. GREE’s offices in China and the UK have been shut down, and in the US and Canada the platform division has been shrunk, with staff being integrated back to Japan. Sony and Microsoft are the biggest exhibitors this year, spotlighting new consoles, and for mobile, the new kid on the block is GungHo Online Entertainment, showcasing Puzzle & Dragons in a coming out party reminiscent of GREE two years back. Tokyo Game Show is a very important opportunity for us to interact with our players. Nevertheless, GREE was still out in full force at the Tokyo Game Show this year, with the same humongous booth that they’ve had for the past three years. I wondered, after what was a…

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Back in 2011 the Tokyo Game Show was GREE’s coming out party, with the company planting a very big footprint in the gaming world – quite literally too, occupying about 10% of the entire floorspace. That exhibition was interpreted by some to be more political than practical, a show of power from a company poised to take over the world via smartphones.

Skip to 2013 and we find that GREE, while still a mobile powerhouse, has had to scale things back. GREE’s offices in China and the UK have been shut down, and in the US and Canada the platform division has been shrunk, with staff being integrated back to Japan. Sony and Microsoft are the biggest exhibitors this year, spotlighting new consoles, and for mobile, the new kid on the block is GungHo Online Entertainment, showcasing Puzzle & Dragons in a coming out party reminiscent of GREE two years back.

Tokyo Game Show is a very important opportunity for us to interact with our players.

Nevertheless, GREE was still out in full force at the Tokyo Game Show this year, with the same humongous booth that they’ve had for the past three years. I wondered, after what was a rough year for GREE, why it was necessary for GREE to have such a huge display. I suppose once you make a booth of that magnitude, you may as well keep using it. It’s hardly something you can sell on eBay or Craigslist, is it? But I spoke to GREE senior vice president of social gaming, Eiji Araki, about this, asking why the company still comes to TGS in full force:

The Tokyo Game Show is a very important opportunity for us to interact with our players. In the mobile internet industry it is very difficult to interact with real players to see how they play our games, to see how they are enjoying the games. There are lots of staff here, game producers standing besides the titles they created.

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GREE’s Eiji Araki

This last point took me by surprise, as I had thought that perhaps the staff at the booth were just temporary part-timers. Like most companies at TGS, GREE had its share of models manning their floor space, but it’s encouraging to see that their game producers are on site to speak and interact with consumers.

Araki points out that the focus of their booth is primarily on existing titles rather than new ones. But one fresh change for the GREE booth this year was a dedicated section for Pokelabo, the Japan-based studio which GREE acquired back in October of 2012 for 13.8 billion yen.

Almost a year after that acquisition, Araki tells me that the Pokelabo studio still operates separately for the most part, but that there is a mixed team where Pokelabo and GREE work on collaborative titles. But letting Pokelabo do what they do best is somewhat indicative of GREE’s new focus going forward, distilling their business to do what they collectively do best. Araki explains:

That’s why we downsized some studios, and these studios are still doing really well, focusing on what they are good at. So we are creating lots of new games in US studio for US market, and in the Japan studio for Japan market. At this moment, we are not creating games from Japan for abroad, or from US to Japan, It would be better for our studios to focus on what they are good at, focus on the markets they know.

This applies to San Francisco-based Funzio as well, the other big GREE purchase in 2012, as Araki notes that their US studio is not only stable but actually growing. The Funzio-developed title Knights & Dragons has been doing pretty well of late in the US market, which has been ranking well on the iOS top grossing charts in the US thanks to continued in-game events. Crime City is another Funzio title that has fared well in many markets.

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However, Araki admits that they will stop cut back on developing card battle games for the US market however, as that genre is “not huge,” and already pretty saturated. Of course, the card battle genre is still a massive market in Japan, and GREE will continue to develop such titles at home [1].

GREE’s refocus in the coming year will be largely about increasing their hit-ratio, says Araki in true gamer lingo. The company has yet to produce the big runaway hit recently that we might have expected from them.

And now, with more competition at home and abroad, GREE still has a significant challenge ahead if it wants to win the attention of the world’s mobile gamers.


  1. A little more on this point. GREE’s NFL Elite card battle game (which I’ve been a big fan of, as I wrote in my review here) is now doing well, now that the 2013 NFL season has kicked off. Since it was rebranded from NFL Shuffle back on September 3rd, the game has been ranked in or near the top ten for the iOS US market. The other sports card battle game, MLB Full Deck, has not been as fortunate, Araki noting that we have “almost stopped” it.  ↩

Talking with Japanese indie developer SummerTime Studios at Tokyo Game Show [Video]

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Earlier this month we stumbled across Ancient Surfer a gem of a Japanese indie developer, SummerTime Studio based out of Okinawa. So I suppose I should not have been surprised to see them turn up in the indie section of the Tokyo Game Show 2013, which kicked off today. Ancient Surfer currently tops the iOS sports category in 11 countries But I was surprised. Very pleasantly so, in fact. We rarely get a chance to mention any companies based out of Okinawa. And to see Ancient Surfer doing so well right now is especially good to see. We spoke with the company’s president, Hirotsu Takeyasu, who told us that Ancient Surfer has surpassed 500,000 downloads globally. As we look at the app rankings right now, we can see that it tops the iOS sports category in 11 countries, mostly around Asia. SummerTime Studio was founded back in 2011, and to date has made eight apps of their own, as well as many more for clients. They will be exhibiting in the quiet indie corner of the Tokyo Game Show for the next few days, so be sure not to miss them. If you haven’t tried Ancient Surfer yet, check out…

Earlier this month we stumbled across Ancient Surfer a gem of a Japanese indie developer, SummerTime Studio based out of Okinawa. So I suppose I should not have been surprised to see them turn up in the indie section of the Tokyo Game Show 2013, which kicked off today.

Ancient Surfer currently tops the iOS sports category in 11 countries

But I was surprised. Very pleasantly so, in fact. We rarely get a chance to mention any companies based out of Okinawa. And to see Ancient Surfer doing so well right now is especially good to see.

We spoke with the company’s president, Hirotsu Takeyasu, who told us that Ancient Surfer has surpassed 500,000 downloads globally. As we look at the app rankings right now, we can see that it tops the iOS sports category in 11 countries, mostly around Asia.

SummerTime Studio was founded back in 2011, and to date has made eight apps of their own, as well as many more for clients. They will be exhibiting in the quiet indie corner of the Tokyo Game Show for the next few days, so be sure not to miss them.

If you haven’t tried Ancient Surfer yet, check out our demo video below. Or pick it up for free over on the App Store or from Google Play.

Big thanks to my colleague Yukari Mistuhashi, who conducted a number of fun interviews today, including the one above.

Voltage makes romantic fantasy into reality at Tokyo Game Show 2013 [Video]

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Today was the opening day of the Tokyo Game Show 2013.  At this year’s event we wanted to focus on mobile developers in particular. And given the popularity of love simulation games here in Japan, we were not surprised to find a section dedicated to developers of this genre. Readers might recall that back in May we wrote about one of these games, called ‘Office Secrets’. And the company behind the app, Voltage, was in attendance today, with a very interesting booth. Voltage has produced over 50 apps in total, all love simulations. Here visitors could play the popular mobile game, but also take photos with real ‘ikemen’ (Japanese for ‘good-looking’) on a faux wedding ceremony backdrop (pictured above). It took the fantasy of the game made into a reality for fans. Voltage provides over 50 apps in total, which is a pretty impressive total — even more impressive when you consider that they are all of the love simulation variety. According to reps Mayuko Sugihara and Emiri Okawa, of their many mobile applications, the most popular app is ‘Chikai no kiss wa totsuzenni’ (roughly translated as ‘The Sudden Kiss for a Promise’). With this app, female users can play…

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TGS2013 was mostly filled with booth babes, but Voltage had booth boys!

Today was the opening day of the Tokyo Game Show 2013.  At this year’s event we wanted to focus on mobile developers in particular. And given the popularity of love simulation games here in Japan, we were not surprised to find a section dedicated to developers of this genre. Readers might recall that back in May we wrote about one of these games, called ‘Office Secrets’. And the company behind the app, Voltage, was in attendance today, with a very interesting booth.

Voltage has produced over 50 apps in total, all love simulations.

Here visitors could play the popular mobile game, but also take photos with real ‘ikemen’ (Japanese for ‘good-looking’) on a faux wedding ceremony backdrop (pictured above). It took the fantasy of the game made into a reality for fans.

Voltage provides over 50 apps in total, which is a pretty impressive total — even more impressive when you consider that they are all of the love simulation variety. According to reps Mayuko Sugihara and Emiri Okawa, of their many mobile applications, the most popular app is ‘Chikai no kiss wa totsuzenni’ (roughly translated as ‘The Sudden Kiss for a Promise’). With this app, female users can play a role as the main character who is in a fake marriage with a handsome guy.

Chikai no kiss wa totsuzenni is used by a wide-range of women from age 19 to 44, but the most active users are women in their 30s. Many are returning users due to the fact that the romance progresses and gets more interesting as the story moves forward.

Voltage plans to release at least one app per month, with plans to develop similar games that men can enjoy as well.

Check out our interview with Emiri Okawa from Voltage in the video below.