Post date: Oct 03, 2011 10:37:59 AM
Japan's GREE and DeNA take aim at games like Zynga's Farmville and other social gaming companies as they eye U.S. consumers, but that may be easier said than done.
JAPAN-SOCIAL GAMING - Raising a pig or playing poker. Passing time on your mobile phone or Facebook, means billion dollar revenues for social game makers like Zynga.
And now, other firms want a piece of the action -- as they look to attract a new breed of casual gamersThis is Doriland, a game that has millions of Japanese tapping away at their phones.
Japan is Asia's videogame capital. At this year's Tokyo Game Show, GREE, the maker of Doriland and its rival DeNA were among several social game developers besieged by avid fans.
And now they hope to repeat that feat in Europe and the U-S. DeNA's CEO Isao Moriyasu explains.
DeNA CEO, ISAO MORIYASU, SAYING:
"We're going to expand Japan's mobile games market overseas. And if we can't do that alone then we'll use M-and-A, tie-ups and joint ventures to reach that goal."
GREE recently acquired OpenFeint while DeNA purchased N-G-moco. Both are small players in the U.S. - but they provide an important foothold in a rapidly growing sector
Global sales of social games are expected to surge by 2015 -- and that's not even including mobile phones
Companies like DeNA and GREE are hoping to rely on the same playbook they used to conquer Japan's gaming sector ...
Social gamer and blogger Tetsuya Monobe spends 100 thousand yen or 1300 U-S dollars every month on social games, by buying virtual trinkets to beat anonymous opponents.
SOCIAL MOBILE GAMER & BLOGGER,TETSUYA MONOBE, SAYING:
"Most of my money is spent on new games. And there's so many coming out all the time… It's going to be a bit of a problem if this continues."
DeNa and GREE have been so successful they've sparked a surge in the number of Japanese social gamers.
GREE's founder and CEO Yoshikazu Tanaka.
SOUNDBITE (Japanese) GREE PRESIDENT, YOSHIKAZU TANAKA, SAYING:
"The business model we developed for Japan's feature phones will work for smartphones. And what's worked for Japan's smartphones will succeed globally."
But going from people like Tetsuya to the average American consumer may be easier said than done
Zynga has dominated the field with addictive games like Cityville, while Electronic Arts is adapting games like The Sims to social media.
And embedding games into Facebook has been integral to their success
DeNA and GREE will need to make games like Doriland popular outside of Japan AND establish social platforms through its U-S acquisitions.
Ken Sena, Director of Equity Research at Evercore Partners.
EVERCORE PARTNERS' DIRECTOR OF EQUITY RESEARCH, KEN SENA, SAYING:
"I don't think there's a big opportunity for a new platform to really be created for gamers in the U-S unless it's a very core gamer experience that's smaller in scale."
REUTERS CORRESPONDENT KEI OKAMURA SAYING:
"Either way it's game on for companies like Zynga and its pig farms. But a failure to catch on to Japanese games like Doriland could mean a quick "game over."
Kei Okamura, Reuters Tokyo.