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NEWS: Bloomberg: Japan Mobile Games Lose Market Share to Chinese, S. Korean Games

I don't know what to say, Japan falling its smartphone trend to an Korea and China is no sense to me at all.

Did Korea and China defeated Japan over its smartphone, because they are known for large amount of innovations than Japan had?

Korea has K-Pop, K-Drama and MMORPG while China has amzing culture and historical presevations. But yeah, i wonder if Chinese Pop culture will start rival Japanese & Korean Pop culture too?

I wouldn't be surprised if this was, at least in part, simply due to the fact that most Japanese smartphone games are region-locked which puts a pretty severe limitation on their user base. I play a number of them but I have to sideload the apks - something most people won't bother to do (or are not able to do, if they lack the know-how). Sure, a few of them have been released in other regions with localizations and all, but most of them are Japan only. Meanwhile, in my experience Chinese or Korean mobage are not region locked, which makes it possible for them to address a much wider audience.

So yet again market shows that insularity and stubborn refusal to get on with the times will eventually prove a disadvantage...

Heishi wrote:

Felicity dash wrote: I can somewhat relate. The games are fun and actually quite addicting but what sells it for me at least is the equality of the characters. Female characters get the same chances as male characters & it’s relatively cheap to buy items for summoning characters. And Onmyoji & Food Fantasy seem to be a major fan favorite over at pixiv But is there a Japanese equivalent?

Japanese equivalent of what? If you mean to compare gatcha games, then look on the google play store or Apple`s store.

I don't know where you were during the whole 6th generation (PS2, Xbox, GC) but the Japanese developers' decline started during the 7th generation (Xbox 360, Ps3, Wii) and one of the main reason was/is the rising of the mobile games market ... they were still going strong on both home and portable consoles up until 2005 - 2006

Rednimue wrote:

I don't know where you were during the whole 6th generation (PS2, Xbox, GC) but the Japanese developers' decline started during the 7th generation (Xbox 360, Ps3, Wii) and one of the main reason was/is the rising of the mobile games market ... they were still going strong on both home and portable consoles up until 2005 - 2006

With Japan always having been iffy towards consoles unlike North America and Europe I'd be surprised if japanese publishers were actually doing good business there even during the 6th generation especially with the fact that the PS2 was the only system doing numbers anywhere.

Plus even with them losing market shares to China and South Korea I don't know why you think they'd just up and stop chasing after a market that's still profitable to them just to go back to something that while profitable to them isn't as profitable to them in their home market.

Felicity dash wrote:

Heishi wrote: Felicity dash wrote: I can somewhat relate. The games are fun and actually quite addicting but what sells it for me at least is the equality of the characters. Female characters get the same chances as male characters & it’s relatively cheap to buy items for summoning characters. And Onmyoji & Food Fantasy seem to be a major fan favorite over at pixiv But is there a Japanese equivalent? Japanese equivalent of what? If you mean to compare gatcha games, then look on the google play store or Apple`s store.

I'm mean in terms of female equality.