Minination by DeNA has been released on the App Store.Royal Theif or Bandit Nation is also FREE and now #36 on the Japanese leaderboard. It’s gaining traction in other countries, I wonder how far it’ll go.
From April this year some free apps have started to appear in the top 10 on the App Store. Some of them are social battle games played in browsers.
The top positionwas taken by a Free app.
Zynga had Mafia Wars and other apps in the App Store but they didn’t sell. Pincus also bagged the App Store. But recently each of the apps has In-App purchasing being put into them and re-appearing on the App Store.
Vampires, MafiaWars, StreetRacing are being invested into.
iPhone and iPod Touch apps that use In-App purchasing are a rare occurance in Japan. Will people really play them? .. is, I get the feeling, the (fair) question still being asked. But the big players have done them, so they must be big.
But whay have they taken this path? Facebook may have reached it’s limits – that may be the answer. My thoughts are that the purchasing of In-App currency will soon be announced s ok by Apple, and Zynga are preparing. (My source is someone overseas, mum’s the word).
By the way Zynga’s apps use item purchasing (iTunes link),
The Godfather by iMob uses virtual currency that you have to purchase.
iKnights 46 Magic（iTunes）
The Storm 8 app also uses monetization.
Kingdoms Live-34 Legend Points（iTunes）
Pets Live Flicker（iTunes）
The browser games are in the RolePlaying and Strategy categories, others have also been released. In the Japanese app leadeboards, 8 of the top 100 are battle games and 3 are social-type games. A farmville type game is #1.
You could say that recently 10% of downloaded iPhone apps are social games I think the same will happen with Android.
The first wave of social games for iPhone have arrived.
So, should Japanese social app companies just go ahead and make a Galapogos-type social mobile game?
