Japanese Social Game Platform War

Japan has a lot of social game platforms. Japan has much social game platforms. Therefore I made a Japanese main social game platform list.

mixi(PC/Mobile)
History of Japanese open platform began in mixi(from 2009 summer). However, mixi loses in Mobage and GREE now.

Mobage(PC/Mobile)
They are the second open platforms in Japan. They were only mobile, but they cooperated with Yahoo!Japan later and opened Yahoo! Mobage(for PC).

GREE(Mobile)
They are late departure, but are a platform making money most now. They offer a social game only in mobile.

Ameba(Mobile)
Ameba is a CyberAgent's social community. Ameblo(Blog) and AmebaPigg(Virtual World) are famous, but they provide a lot of games for mobile in conjunction with them.

Colopl(Mobile)
Colopl is known as operator of mobile geolocation social game. However, they are platforms specialized in geolocation game with it.

NicoNico Douga(PC)
NicoNico Douga is Japanese popular video sharing site. They open platform "NicoNico application " which can play a social game while watching video.

Hangame(PC/Mobile)
Hangame was well-established online game portal site. However, they make efforts in a social game now.

entag!(Mobile)
They are the mobile social game platform which just opened on January 11. They assume mobile SNS "logtomo" which started in 2007 and renewed it on starting a social game site with a smartphone.

DMM.com(Mobile)
They are japanese PPV sites, but are known as porn video site mainly. They started a social game platform for mobile experimentally. Their characteristic is providing a porno social game. Hentai eroge and social game, this is the strongest combination! :)

Japan has many platforms besides these. Those big characteristics is almost of "for future phone". And everybody globalization and cross platform are behind.

Kawaii social music service "Beatrobo"

When Turntable was released, it was popular among Japanese geeks at first. However, we can't access it from Japan now.

Therefore Beatrobo appeared.

Beatrobo is social music service that we can log in by Facebook account. A characteristic of this is asynchronous, not real-time. Other social music services are "real time". We cannot enjoy music together if we do not log in with a friend. If we compare them, Beatrobo is a social game, other social music services are virtual world or MMO.

We make the robot avatar first.

This is my room.

Facebook friends using Beatrobo are made a list automatically.

Avatars which we can display at a time are to 5 including myself. we can choose whose avatar we display.

Let's search numbers and add them to my play list.

We can search in Japanese.

Let's send a request to a friend of the same music taste.

Beatrobo exhibits in SXSW.

Beatrobo Facebook page

See also:
Social Music Community Beatrobo Makes Sharing And Listening To Songs With Friends Easy, Asynchronous(TechCrunch)

Virtual gift wrapping function of AmebaPigg

Is the wrapping function necessary for virtual goods? CyberAgent has already carried it out.
Their virtual gift service "Ameba present" had a wrapping function than before.

However, this is something like icon(It resemble a virtual gift of Facebook).
They applied this function to popular virtual world "Ameba Pigg".

I got the virtual gift of the New Year's card from a friend the day before yesterday.

I can give my avatar it.

Therefore I decided to present a different virtual gift to a friend as thanks. The price of virtual gifts are 40yen - 250yen(0.5USD - 3.3USD). I chose the virtual gift of the "Otoshidama(Japanese New Year's present money)".

I chose the gift box next. These have various kinds like virtual gifts. And they are charged, too.

In addition, I was able to attach a message and appoint the date and time to give it a virtual gift. I thought that this was a very convenient function. They will assume a birthday and a memorial day.
I think that the wrapping function of the virtual gift evolves "send" to "presenting".

Let's battle with AR Kamen Rider in a convenience store

Bandai NAMCO games release cool AR application for iPhone of Kamen Rider.

Originally this is AR application corresponding to Bandai NAMCO's trading cards "Carddas". Children scan AR marker printed on cards and can enjoy a card battle with iPhone.


This is AR Carddas pac.


Seven-Eleven and the Bandai NAMCO games held a tie-up event using this.

 Seven-Eleven installed such AR marker in each stores of the whole Japan.

  3DCG of Kamen Rider appears on a screen of iPhone when we scan this AR marker. We can fight with this Kamen Rider.

I have only 2 kamen Riders. This application has a collection function of save data which we scanned.

Chose the combination of play. Battle!

Unfortunately my Kamen Rider lost. However, we can challenge it again and again.

In addition, there are a vender machine function and an album function. Surprisingly we can play all free of charge. And this application is free, too.

The game application which is the most popular in Japan is a "nameko mushroom"

Do you know the most popular game application in Japan? It's "Nameko Saibai Kit(nameko mushroom cultivation Kit)".

This is a simple game which cultivates nameko mushrooms and gathers a harvest. There are not a level system, charging system and social function at all. However, the cute nameko mushroom characters are collecting many fans(especially women).

How to play are only combining trees and equipment, and cultivates nameko mushrooms.

Then, we can harvest various kinds of funny nameko mushrooms.

If we release it for a long time, mold grow in a tree.

The winter limited version was released at the end of last year, too.

Most of how to play does not change, but designs are different. Moreover, we can harvest the nameko mushroom in connection with Christmas and Japanese New Year.

Furthermore, we can get cute wall paper for iPhone.

Developer of application Bee works released an Android version of this  recently. It broke through 200,000 downloading from release in one week. It has broken through 3,3M downloads in those whole series(Nameko Saibai Kit:2,1M DL, winter limited version:1M DL).

They began character-goods sale recently.

This business model resembles Angry Birds of Rovio.