Japanese social gaming giant DeNA is offering support for American game developers who want to bring their games to the Japanese market, where it says the amount of money to be made is “astronomical.”
DeNA and Yahoo! Japan partnered in April to launch a social gaming platform, Yahoo Mobage. Now the company is officially inviting American game developers to release mobile and PC games to Japan’s roughly 85 million Internet users via Mobage.
DeNA claims research shows that Japanese users will pay an estimated $4 on average for virtual goods, while American users will pay just $1 on average. Japanese developers on Mobage are already making an average of $1 million a month in their top games, DeNA said in a press release.
The company has partnered with several companies in order to offer services that will make it easier for American developers to transition to the Japanese market. DeNA says it can facilitate translation and testing as well as advertisements and in-game purchases. DeNA has also partnered with a Japanese hosting service provider and will assist in creating Japanese bank accounts for developers.
“By offering this platform and providing tools to help ease the transition, DeNA hopes to be American game developers’ portal to the East,” CEO Tomoko Namba said in a press release.
The Japanese social gaming market is worth an estimated $2 billion, Reuters has reported. DeNA competitor Zynga, the U.S.-based social gaming company and maker of the popular game FarmVille, recently formed Zynga Japan in partnership with a Japanese company.
Mobage will launch October 1, DeNA said.