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Line’s Sonic Dash S still has many obstacles to overcome

SCORE 1,107 Rick Martin Rick Martin
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Line released its mobile game Sonic Dash S, developed by Sega, back in late January. The title was made available in a number of Asian countries, but it hadn’t performed very well until a recent 1.1 update gave it a boost in most of its app markets. Still, this is perhaps the most famous IP that Line has featured in a game to date, and I’d expected it to perform far better. I hadn’t given the game a serious look until recently, so I thought I’d share a few thoughts here. Sonic Dash is, as has been pointed out before, more or less a Temple Run clone, requiring you to swipe up/down/left/right to avoid enemies and treacherous obstacles. You can gather and use items you collect, as well as use supporting characters (or Chaos [1]). With the exception of a number of surprising app crashes, I found the gameplay pretty straightforward, with much of the Line integration that we have from the company’s other mobile games. You can get rewards by sharing information to your friends on Line, and even borrow Chao characters from them if you wish. The problem for me is that only one of my 162 Line…

sonic

Line released its mobile game Sonic Dash S, developed by Sega, back in late January. The title was made available in a number of Asian countries, but it hadn’t performed very well until a recent 1.1 update gave it a boost in most of its app markets. Still, this is perhaps the most famous IP that Line has featured in a game to date, and I’d expected it to perform far better.

I hadn’t given the game a serious look until recently, so I thought I’d share a few thoughts here. Sonic Dash is, as has been pointed out before, more or less a Temple Run clone, requiring you to swipe up/down/left/right to avoid enemies and treacherous obstacles. You can gather and use items you collect, as well as use supporting characters (or Chaos [1]).

With the exception of a number of surprising app crashes, I found the gameplay pretty straightforward, with much of the Line integration that we have from the company’s other mobile games. You can get rewards by sharing information to your friends on Line, and even borrow Chao characters from them if you wish. The problem for me is that only one of my 162 Line friends is actually playing Sonic Dash – not a good number in comparison to other Line games I’ve played.

With the new 1.1 update a number of changes have been made to the game, with stages shortened and a new character, Blaze (pictured below), added to the list of playable characters [2]. A new beach course has been added to the game as well.

If you’d like to give Line Sonic Dash S a try, you can get it as a free download for iOS or Android. Let us know in the comments if you find it a tad crashy as well!

sonic

  1. By ‘Chaos’ I don’t mean the word ‘chaos’ but rather plural of the word ‘Chao’.  ↩

  2. You need to spend rings to upgrade to Blaze of course, so it will take a little while before you can unlock her.  ↩

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Line’s Creators Market opens for registration, accepting sticker submissions

Rick Martin Rick Martin
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Line has just opened up its Creators Market (at creator.line.me), allowing users to register and submit stickers for review as of today. If Line approves your submission, then they will go on sale in May. According to the company’s announcement, users in Indonesia, Japan, Taiwan, and Thailand will be able to purchase at that time, with plans for more regions to come in the future. A set of 40 stickers will sell for 100 yen (or about a dollar), of which 50% goes to the creator. Line is already making a fortune from stickers, as we have pointed out before, and this new initiative will boost that revenue stream even more, and spur more user engagement, Line

line-stickers

Line has just opened up its Creators Market (at creator.line.me), allowing users to register and submit stickers for review as of today. If Line approves your submission, then they will go on sale in May. According to the company’s announcement, users in Indonesia, Japan, Taiwan, and Thailand will be able to purchase at that time, with plans for more regions to come in the future.

A set of 40 stickers will sell for 100 yen (or about a dollar), of which 50% goes to the creator. Line is already making a fortune from stickers, as we have pointed out before, and this new initiative will boost that revenue stream even more, and spur more user engagement,

Line

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Uniqlo now selling t-shirts featuring Line characters

Rick Martin Rick Martin
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If you’re starting to tire of seeing Line’s characters all over the place here in Japan, I have some bad news for you. Line is teaming up with fashion retailer Uniqlo to offer Line Character branded t-shirts as part of the new Uniqlo t-shirt (UT) line-up [1]. In my view, Uniqlo lends some much-needed credibility to Line’s characters, putting them alongside far more established brands like Hello Kitty and Disney. The shirts are on sale now for the very affordable price of 943 yen (or just over $9). Check out Uniqlo’s promo video for the new 2014 line-up below, including the new Line t-shirts about halfway through. (It’s an unlisted video, so if this embed suddenly stops working, you know why!) Via news.ameba.jp As far as I can tell, this is just for Uniqlo stores in Japan. I can’t find the Line t-shirts on the Uniqlo USA website.  ↩

uniqlo-line

If you’re starting to tire of seeing Line’s characters all over the place here in Japan, I have some bad news for you. Line is teaming up with fashion retailer Uniqlo to offer Line Character branded t-shirts as part of the new Uniqlo t-shirt (UT) line-up [1].

In my view, Uniqlo lends some much-needed credibility to Line’s characters, putting them alongside far more established brands like Hello Kitty and Disney. The shirts are on sale now for the very affordable price of 943 yen (or just over $9).

Check out Uniqlo’s promo video for the new 2014 line-up below, including the new Line t-shirts about halfway through. (It’s an unlisted video, so if this embed suddenly stops working, you know why!)

Via news.ameba.jp

  1. As far as I can tell, this is just for Uniqlo stores in Japan. I can’t find the Line t-shirts on the Uniqlo USA website.  ↩

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Line rolls out ‘Sticons’, first on Android

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With its new 4.2.0 Android update today, Japanese messaging app Line rolled out something that it’s calling ‘Sticons’. The company says that these can be used like emoticons inline in text messages, and also as the sort of larger stickers that current users of the service are already familiar with. You can read more about this new feature over on the Line blog.

With its new 4.2.0 Android update today, Japanese messaging app Line rolled out something that it’s calling ‘Sticons’. The company says that these can be used like emoticons inline in text messages, and also as the sort of larger stickers that current users of the service are already familiar with.

You can read more about this new feature over on the Line blog.

line-sticons

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How do you promote innovation within a company? [NES 2014 Panel]

Masaru Ikeda Masaru Ikeda
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This is a part of our coverage of the Japan New Economy Summit 2014. You can follow our updates on Twitter as well at @thebridge_e. The morning session on day two of the New Economy Summit in Tokyo opened with a panel on how companies can spur innovation, and it boasted an all-star panel of speakers: Matt Wilsey, entrepreneur and investor Akira Morikawa, CEO of Line Corporation Jerry Yang, Co-founder, AME Cloud Ventures Morikawa-san started off the panel with an introduction to Line (which we have covered extensively, a service that has now reached 400 million users. From his perspective, regardless of the scale of your organization, everyone can create a disruptive business. The problem is that every organization has nay-sayers when you come up with a new idea, and that is typically the biggest obstacle when trying to executing. Japanese people tend to follow a plan, and avoid changing it once it’s in place. So at his company, they make no detailed plan for the long term, and that helps their employees stay ready for unexpected changes based on user responses. He emphasized that it is not their management but rather their users who should decide if a new…

internal-innovation-panel

This is a part of our coverage of the Japan New Economy Summit 2014. You can follow our updates on Twitter as well at @thebridge_e.

The morning session on day two of the New Economy Summit in Tokyo opened with a panel on how companies can spur innovation, and it boasted an all-star panel of speakers:

  • Matt Wilsey, entrepreneur and investor
  • Akira Morikawa, CEO of Line Corporation
  • Jerry Yang, Co-founder, AME Cloud Ventures

Morikawa-san started off the panel with an introduction to Line (which we have covered extensively, a service that has now reached 400 million users. From his perspective, regardless of the scale of your organization, everyone can create a disruptive business. The problem is that every organization has nay-sayers when you come up with a new idea, and that is typically the biggest obstacle when trying to executing.

morikawa-internal-innovation
Line CEO Akira Morikawa

Japanese people tend to follow a plan, and avoid changing it once it’s in place. So at his company, they make no detailed plan for the long term, and that helps their employees stay ready for unexpected changes based on user responses. He emphasized that it is not their management but rather their users who should decide if a new idea is good or bad.

Jerry Yang is best known as the founder of search giant Yahoo, but he’s currently working as an investor in Silicon Valley. His company, AME Cloud Ventures, has invested in over 50 startups, many of which are running data-driven businesses. He’s expecting huge potential in this sector since a big data methodology will enable any industry to rethink and rebuild things in our world. His strategy is based on an assumption/prediction about what will happen in the near future, and from there he decides what kind of startups to invest in.

Jerry Yang
Jerry Yang

In a response to the moderator’s [1] question about how to promote an entrepreneurial mindset at a company, Jerry explained there has to be a sense of urgency. Startups have obviously have it, but established companies also require it in order to make something new happen from the inside.

Matt noted that we can’t force anyone to be innovative. All we can do is create an environment that is friendly to innovation. Innovations typically happen in a place you’d never expect. And one of the biggest failures for companies when they have no time to create an environment or a culture that permits employees to try and fail.

Matt Wilsey
Matt Wilsey

  1. The panel was moderated by Takeshi Natsuno, a professor at Keio University.  ↩

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Asia has an appetite for Line’s Cookie Run

Rick Martin Rick Martin
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Line’s ‘Cookie Run’ game (trailer above) has surpasses the 20 million downloads mark (as of April 4th), with strong performance across the Asia region. On Google Play, it’s currently the top game in Thailand and Taiwan, and on iOS it’s the top game in Laos and Indonesia. Such milestones are pretty common for Line’s repertoire of casual games, but Cookie Run (released in late January) has been rather quick, picking up 10 million in its first month and another 10 million in 36 days after that. Via Gamebiz.jp

Line’s ‘Cookie Run’ game (trailer above) has surpasses the 20 million downloads mark (as of April 4th), with strong performance across the Asia region. On Google Play, it’s currently the top game in Thailand and Taiwan, and on iOS it’s the top game in Laos and Indonesia.

Such milestones are pretty common for Line’s repertoire of casual games, but Cookie Run (released in late January) has been rather quick, picking up 10 million in its first month and another 10 million in 36 days after that.

Via Gamebiz.jp

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Line provides free calls to phones in Chile after 8.2 magnitude quake

Rick Martin Rick Martin
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In the wake of the massive earthquake in Chile this week, Japan’s Line Corporation is allowing users of Line Call to make free phone calls to the country between now and April 10, with a call duration limit of between 15 and 20 minutes [1]. From the company’s announcement: In order to enable LINE users to check on the safety of their relative and loved ones in Chile and aid in disaster relief efforts, we will be making all calls made to landlines and cellular phones in Chile through our service LINE Call free of charge for one week. Users in countries where the service is offered will not have to worry about telephone fees or charges. For more details, check out Line’s official blog. From countries where Line Call is available.  ↩

In the wake of the massive earthquake in Chile this week, Japan’s Line Corporation is allowing users of Line Call to make free phone calls to the country between now and April 10, with a call duration limit of between 15 and 20 minutes [1]. From the company’s announcement:

In order to enable LINE users to check on the safety of their relative and loved ones in Chile and aid in disaster relief efforts, we will be making all calls made to landlines and cellular phones in Chile through our service LINE Call free of charge for one week. Users in countries where the service is offered will not have to worry about telephone fees or charges.

For more details, check out Line’s official blog.

  1. From countries where Line Call is available.  ↩

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Line passes 400M users, but is there room to further innovate in mobile messaging?

Rick Martin Rick Martin
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Japan’s Line Corporation announced today that its total registered users for its Line messaging app have surpassed the 400 million mark. The company has also released an informative graphic showing the geographical breakdown of where its users are (see below). Still no official word from the company on active user numbers. It will be interesting if the company can make a significant splash in the US market. They haven’t really made such a push there to date, but it’s likely to happen this year. I’m still not such a heavy Line user, even though I live here in Japan. And I can’t help but wonder if new apps like FireChat, that use iOS’s Multipeer Connectivity Framework, could represent opportunity for even further innovation in this space. Messaging apps are cool. But offline messaging is even cooler than cool.

Japan’s Line Corporation announced today that its total registered users for its Line messaging app have surpassed the 400 million mark. The company has also released an informative graphic showing the geographical breakdown of where its users are (see below). Still no official word from the company on active user numbers.

It will be interesting if the company can make a significant splash in the US market. They haven’t really made such a push there to date, but it’s likely to happen this year.

I’m still not such a heavy Line user, even though I live here in Japan. And I can’t help but wonder if new apps like FireChat, that use iOS’s Multipeer Connectivity Framework, could represent opportunity for even further innovation in this space.

Messaging apps are cool. But offline messaging is even cooler than cool.

line-infographic-400-million

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Japanese entertainment company partners with Line to promote its artists

Rick Martin Rick Martin
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Avex Entertainment Inc. [1], a music and video production company based in Tokyo, has announced a partnership with Line Corporation based around mobile content related to Avex’s artists, which include music superstar Ayumi Hamasaki. Avex has already provided Line stamps for Hamasaki (see below) and other artists, and they also create rooms in Line Play where fans can interact. The new partnership will see Avex continue to use Line and its many services as a platform, ostensibly in a more formalized manner moving forward. It will be interesting to see how many more entertainment companies follow suit. Avex Group via Venture Now A subsidiary of Avex Group.  ↩

Avex Entertainment Inc. [1], a music and video production company based in Tokyo, has announced a partnership with Line Corporation based around mobile content related to Avex’s artists, which include music superstar Ayumi Hamasaki. Avex has already provided Line stamps for Hamasaki (see below) and other artists, and they also create rooms in Line Play where fans can interact.

The new partnership will see Avex continue to use Line and its many services as a platform, ostensibly in a more formalized manner moving forward. It will be interesting to see how many more entertainment companies follow suit.

Avex Group via Venture Now

ayumi-hamasaki-stamps

  1. A subsidiary of Avex Group.  ↩

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Line moving in on CocoPPa’s territory with new homescreen customization app

Rick Martin Rick Martin
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We’re written about the success of Japanese homescreen customization app CocoPPa on this site many times in the past. Now it seems that Japan’s Line Corporation wants a piece of that action, today announcing its own homescreen decoration app called Line Deco: LINE DECO allows users to add a personal touch to the home screen of their smartphones by using customizable wallpapers, icons, and more. In addition to offering items based on LINE characters, the service also allows users to upload and use original decoration items they create themselves. Sound familiar? Yes, I’m sure CocoPPa thinks so too. The app is available for both iOS and Android, in English, Japanese, and Korean to start. 3000+ decoration items will be free until the end of April, to celebrate the app’s launch.

We’re written about the success of Japanese homescreen customization app CocoPPa on this site many times in the past. Now it seems that Japan’s Line Corporation wants a piece of that action, today announcing its own homescreen decoration app called Line Deco:

LINE DECO allows users to add a personal touch to the home screen of their smartphones by using customizable wallpapers, icons, and more. In addition to offering items based on LINE characters, the service also allows users to upload and use original decoration items they create themselves.

Sound familiar? Yes, I’m sure CocoPPa thinks so too.

The app is available for both iOS and Android, in English, Japanese, and Korean to start. 3000+ decoration items will be free until the end of April, to celebrate the app’s launch.

line-deco

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