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Yahoo! and DeNA Officially Invite Game Developers to ‘Go East’, and Make More Money in Social Games with Yahoo Mobage Developer Portal
Yahoo! and DeNA Officially Invite Game Developers to ‘Go East’, and Make More Money in Social Games with Yahoo Mobage Developer Portal
Yahoo! and DeNA Officially Invite Game Developers to ‘Go East’, and Make More Money in Social Games with Yahoo Mobage Developer Portal
Tuesday, August 31 2010 08:00 | Author: GameNewswire | 
Yahoo! and DeNA Officially Invite Game Developers to ‘Go East’, and Make More Money in Social Games with Yahoo Mobage Developer Portal
Developers get entry into Japanese gaming market with translation, hosting and monetization resources
San Mateo, Calif- August 31, 2010 - Last April, Yahoo Japan and social gaming giant, DeNA. partnered to form the PC Social Gaming platform, Yahoo Mobage. The platform has since released Sandbox and is heading for a public launch on Oct 1. With top US developers planning to release games, DeNA is inviting American developers of all shapes and sizes to use Yahoo Mobage as a portal to easily bring their games to Japan.
Yahoo Mobage’s structure allows the same game to be played on PC and mobile portals. The platform is currently inviting both PC and mobile developers to create and port games with Yahoo Mobage. The platform brings together two massive bases: DeNA’s 20 million users and Yahoo’s 52 million monthly active users. Together, the companies plan to achieve significant penetration of Japan’s 90 million Internet users.
DeNA`s mobile platform, Mobage, has been open to developers since January, where daily sales increased 10 fold in six months. Japanese developers on Mobage are already making an average of $1 million a month in their top games. Industry researchers, in a recent report, estimated ARPU of Virtual Goods to be $4 in Japan. four times that of the ARPU of the American market.
“The amount of money to be made in Japanese social gaming is astronomical,” says DeNA’s CEO, Tomoko Namba. “By offering this platform and providing tools to help ease the transition, DeNA hopes to be American game developers’ portal to the East.”
DeNA will be providing localization, hosting and payment solutions for developers.
• Localization: DeNA is partnering with four companies doing game translation and testing, preparing games with a turnaround time of a month on average.
• Hosting: For developers interested in hosting in Japan, DeNA has also partnered with the leading Japanese hosting service provider, IDC Frontier.
• Payments: DeNA does money transfers through international banks. They will also assist in creating Japanese bank accounts for interested developers.
The platform has already raised significant interest in the developer community and is attracting developers from Japan, China, South East Asia and US. DeNA expects the number of developer partners will continue to increase before the public launch on Oct 1.
Developers interested in working with DeNA should visit http://developer.dena.jp/mbga/en/
About DeNA:
DeNA is an operator of leading mobile gaming - SNS site in Japan well known locally as Moba-ge-town, with over 20 million subscribers and $1 billion annual revenues (2010 run rate). DeNA is also an operator of e-commerce sites Mobaoku (mobile auction site), Mobakore (mobile fashion shopping site), Paygent (settlement), bidders (comprehensive B2C/C2C commerce site), and NETSEA Buyers Club (B2B marketplaces).
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