See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based gaming company Gumi is expected to announced a comprehensive partnership with Fuji Media Holdings today, the stock holding company the Japanese TV network giant. The company plans to launch a joint venture worth 500 million yen (approximately $4.8 million) with Fuji Startup Ventures, the investment arm of the media conglomerate. CNet Japan reports the new venture will be called Fuji & Gumi Games. In addition, the gaming company will announce significant funding from the media company and B Dash Ventures. We are told by sources we trust that it will be worth tens of millions of dollars. Gumi previously established Alim, a joint venture gaming company with Fuji Startup Ventures and B Dash Ventures back in July. Their first gaming title Brave Frontier has done quite well this year. Fuji TV has been seeking new revenue streams beyond its primary business. And as a result, both companies have agreed to an extensive business partnership at this time. Gumi has already started marketing many of its mobile games globally, including titles produced by their subsidiaries in Singapore and Korea. The funds raised at this time will be use to fuel the company’s global expansion….
Tokyo-based gaming company Gumi is expected to announced a comprehensive partnership with Fuji Media Holdings today, the stock holding company the Japanese TV network giant. The company plans to launch a joint venture worth 500 million yen (approximately $4.8 million) with Fuji Startup Ventures, the investment arm of the media conglomerate. CNet Japan reports the new venture will be called Fuji & Gumi Games.
In addition, the gaming company will announce significant funding from the media company and B Dash Ventures. We are told by sources we trust that it will be worth tens of millions of dollars.
Gumi previously established Alim, a joint venture gaming company with Fuji Startup Ventures and B Dash Ventures back in July. Their first gaming title Brave Frontier has done quite well this year. Fuji TV has been seeking new revenue streams beyond its primary business. And as a result, both companies have agreed to an extensive business partnership at this time.
Gumi has already started marketing many of its mobile games globally, including titles produced by their subsidiaries in Singapore and Korea. The funds raised at this time will be use to fuel the company’s global expansion. We have reached out to Gumi CEO Hironao Kunimitsu and Fuji Startup Ventures’ manager Yoshiro Taneda for more on this development. So please stay tuned.
This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Osaka 2013. On day one of B Dash Camp 2013 in Osaka, we heard an all-star panel speak on the many issues surrounding mobile content in Japan. The moderator was Katsuaki Sato, the CEO of Metaps, and the lineup of speakers included: Shinji Kimura, from news reader app Gunosy. Shin Murakami, operating officer and chief mobil office of Yahoo Japan Eiji Takahashi the president and CEO of Alim Hiroki Teshima, director and executive officer at United Inc (maker of CocoPPa). On the factors that lead to success Gunosy’s Kimura-san explained a little about their news reader application. He notes that they have a general news section, but also a new features that they released today called a content partners channel. Regarding how to succeed with mobile content, he explained: I think it’s really timing that matters. SmartNews Gunosy came out when I think many people were feeling fatigue from Twitter and Facebook. We had an image of how to solve that, with our app confronting that issue head on. In a way, were were meeting a demand, serving news via email. It just worked out to be the right…
This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Osaka 2013.
On day one of B Dash Camp 2013 in Osaka, we heard an all-star panel speak on the many issues surrounding mobile content in Japan. The moderator was Katsuaki Sato, the CEO of Metaps, and the lineup of speakers included:
Shin Murakami, operating officer and chief mobil office of Yahoo Japan
Eiji Takahashi the president and CEO of Alim
Hiroki Teshima, director and executive officer at United Inc (maker of CocoPPa).
On the factors that lead to success
Gunosy’s Kimura-san explained a little about their news reader application. He notes that they have a general news section, but also a new features that they released today called a content partners channel. Regarding how to succeed with mobile content, he explained:
I think it’s really timing that matters. SmartNews Gunosy came out when I think many people were feeling fatigue from Twitter and Facebook. We had an image of how to solve that, with our app confronting that issue head on. In a way, were were meeting a demand, serving news via email. It just worked out to be the right timing.
In terms of montetization, he added:
If you are taking about tens of millions of users, you need to work on satisfying them, and you can work out the business model at a later stage.
Eiji Takahashi, Alim president
Takahashi started off by introducing Alim’s recently launched game Brave Frontier, noting that they ‘respect’ the structure of Puzzle & Dragons and trying to combine familiar content that Japanese users can enjoy. He disclosed some figures about Brave Frontier, which are as follows, noting that these are pretty high for an RPG:
520,000 user accounts
340,000 monthly active users
120,000 daily active users
monthly PU rate of 10% and monthly ARPPU of 5,000 yen
Takahashi also spoke a little on the use of ads vs viral marketings in promoting a mobile game:
When we started on iOS, we had an affiliation with the Famitsu app, but beyond that it was word of mouth. We had a pre-launch registration. But before our first 100,000 users, there were no ads at all. But when you reach a ceiling, you’ll need to consider investing in ads. (Moderator asks, “TV?”) I can’t say too much more (laughs).
He also acknowledge that the fate of a mobile business can be somewhat beyond your control, especially in the early days.
I think it’s complete luck, because we didn’t expecxt this at all. We had to suspend our service a few days after launch because we couldn’t quite handle the demand. We thought that we can attract a number of users, but we had no idea how much it would be. It was completely beyond our expectation.
Hiroki Teshima, United; Shin Murakami, Yahoo Japan
Murakami of Yahoo Japan said that their company has over 95 million downloads across iOS and Android. Community Factory, which they bought, has over 25 million downloads in total across their apps. Noted that Kakaotalk was also doing well in Japan with 10 million downloads, even though Line is the leader here.
He appeared to envy the position of up-and-comping startups, which show more agility than an entity than Yahoo Japan ever could:
In order to get the timing right, I think if you are in a venture company you need to look at the market size of your sector. Becoming number one in a niche industry is possible, and you can catch a wave without too much hesitation.
Teshima-san from United gave a brief intro to CocoPPa, which just surpasses 15 million users worldwide. He was wearing a Mercari shirt as well, showing his support the e-commerce app that they recently poured $3 million into.
Things never go as expected, but if you have many ways to attract users, you should be ok. I think there should be a plan B and C, not just a plan A.
From the beginning I we prepared a Chinese and Korean version. We used Conyac, and it was a very simple translation, but it was good enough to help us go global. I would advise that if you think your app can go global, then don’t skimp on translation costs.
He noted that they might try expanding into the browser to offer their service on the web. He explained that collecting valuable information from people is a good way to hedge risk in business.
Back in July we reported about a new Japanese mobile gaming studio called Alim, which was jointly established by Fuji Startup Ventures, Gumi Ventures, and B Dash Ventures. Its first mobile game, Brave Frontier, was generally well when it launched, even briefly becoming Japan’s top overall app back on August 8th [1]. Brave Frontier is a sort of card battle RPG, very reminiscent of Puzzle & Dragons in some ways, but without the puzzles. Like most games in this genre you have a party of characters that you can evolve and enhance, and you can also add one friend character to your team each time you venture into battle. Characters correspond to elements/colors, with some more effective against enemies in a rock/paper/scissors fashion (like Puzzle & Dragons and others). I was curious to see that my colleague Junya Mori was into the game, and I had him give me a quick demo of the game (see video below). He points out that the story is not especially great and the loading times can be slow, but that the graphics are really fun at times and gameplay is solid – certainly a great first effort for the folks at Alim. Brave…
Brave Frontier is a sort of card battle RPG, very reminiscent of Puzzle & Dragons in some ways, but without the puzzles. Like most games in this genre you have a party of characters that you can evolve and enhance, and you can also add one friend character to your team each time you venture into battle. Characters correspond to elements/colors, with some more effective against enemies in a rock/paper/scissors fashion (like Puzzle & Dragons and others).
I was curious to see that my colleague Junya Mori was into the game, and I had him give me a quick demo of the game (see video below). He points out that the story is not especially great and the loading times can be slow, but that the graphics are really fun at times and gameplay is solid – certainly a great first effort for the folks at Alim.
Brave Frontier is still only available in Japanese, but I hope that one day they expand language support to cover other markets abroad. These Japanese mobile RPG titles are pretty cool, and I hope western markets warm up to as they gradually move beyond the domestic market.
There’s so much cross-over and cross-pollination in this card battle and RPG genres these days in Japan, and sometimes it makes games a little boring — but on the other hand, it means that developers are standing on each others shoulders and building on what seems to work in the industry. And that’s good to see.
The game launched at the same time that the new studio was announced. Note that it’s only available in the Japanese market. ↩
Alim 
Takeshi Hirano
Rick Martin
