mobile division EAi “Players can grind your way without paying anything, but a decent number will pay. They don’t have to spend a lot, but they do pay more than perhaps you’d think.”
GREE’s Resmini is on a mission to make SNS as big in the West as it is in the East. The firm even had its own huge booth at E3 this year and is courting UK developers
ONE BILLION USERS Tokyo firm Ichiyoshi Securities estimate that the global mobile-game market will grow from $3.8bn in 2010 to $17.6bn in 2015. It’s no wonder that so many want a piece of that. And the growth of mobile gaming is happening so rapidly, that GREE even believes it can go from 230m users to 1bn over the coming few years.
reasons at the right time, we will always consider it.”
CUSTOMER ACQUISITION According to an Insight Consulting Survey, 93 per cent of people who use existing SNS do not want to use another. So encouraging customers to jump to their platform can prove to be an uphill battle.
Center to include social features such as challenges and Facebook integration. This will go live this Autumn with the arrival of iOS 6. And finally there’s Zynga, which has joined GREE and DeNA as one of the firms looking to consolidate the mobile and social markets – in March it acquired Draw Something-studio OMGPOP for an eye-watering $183m. The cost of acquiring social companies and their customers is spiralling. Resmini says: “We are always looking at great companies. If the right one comes along for the right
Buying companies such as Ngmoco, OMGPOP and OpenFeint has become the most successful – albeit expensive – way for these casual giants to ‘acquire’ customers.
“There is a tremendous apathy from consumers to change and use the new Mobage or GREE networks and hence cost to acquire customers will rise rapidly,” says Macquarie analyst David Gibson. Resmini wants “players to learn about GREE through the games,” suggesting that word-of-mouth could prove to be its most powerful marketing tool. And both GREE and DeNA have expressed the “paramount”
importance of developing local content for European and US consumers. However, there’s also a hope that certain Eastern IP can crack the Western market. Already we have seen one hit – DeNA has played its part in the success of card game Rage of Bahamutby Japanese developer Cygames, which has been a top grossing game on both Android and Apple in the US.
But it’s not all about localised content and word- of-mouth. GREE will spend $50m in above-the-line advertising in the US this year. It may not sound a lot to those used to the big budgets in the console space, but it’s a significant investment for mobile games. GREE even took to E3 this year with a booth that was comparable to the sort of stands EA, Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony had. “We are telling the world that we are here and we are going to make a big impact in the gaming space,” Resmini continues. “And what
better place to do that than on gaming’s biggest stage.” GREE, DeNA and the rest believe the mobile phenomenon that has dominated Japan for years is on the brink of reaching the West – due to the proliferation of tablets and
The future is about freemium games and
players pay more than you think.
Nick Earl, EA
smartphones and the increase speeds of mobile networks. And they believe that one- time purchases of apps will make way for the freemium model, where players get their game for free, but are encouraged to pay extra for in-game items and weapons. “The future is not about one-time download, the future is about freemium,” says Nick Earl, head of EA’s
“The number of handsets out there is just growing dramatically every week,” concludes Resmini. “And there are these developing countries that are now getting these high-powered mobile devices. That is a huge leapfrog over consoles, which are just too expensive and too hard to penetrate in these emerging markets. When you see countries like China, India, Russia adopting these handsets, getting to 1bn users in a matter of years is very possible.” GREE has been boosted by support from big third party Western companies. Ubisoft has commissioned an Assassin’s Creed, 2K is developing a Civilization, while Mind Candy is working on two Moshi Monsters titles for its SNS platform. These networks are by no means sure things in the West. But as the traditional console market continues to struggle, the worlds of DeNA and GREE are proving highly attractive to the games industry's biggest names.