Japanese mobile social gaming network GREE has caught the eye this week, with its rather casual upgrading of predictions for its FY12 net sales and net income by a mere 40 to 50 percent to around $1.8 billion and $500 million respectively.
It's particularly impressive given as the only reason given was that the 'monetisation of its social output was increasing at a higher rate than originally expected' - a curse that all companies, no doubt, hope infects them too.
So, despite recent integration issues with US acquisition OpenFeint, it appears to be all systems go, go, go for the combined GREE-OpenFeint collaborative.
Future sign-posted
Ahead of its FY12 Q1 announcement - due tomorrow and sure to be massive - GREE has pre-announced the broad details of its global platform play for 2012.
The formal description of the press release is a little dry, referring to a 'robust new worldwide mobile social gaming platform' that will be released in December.
Labelled as being 'consistent with the strategy of developing products specific to the international free-to-play market', Naoki Aoyagi, CEO of OpenFeint and GREE's non Japanese international operations, said, "This new platform allows our partners to focus on increasing engagement and revenue, while continuing to offer the most comprehensive free-to-play gaming experience.
"The new platform will leverage OpenFeint and GREE assets and will bring together western and Asian mobile social markets with a goal of reaching over one billion users."
OpenFeint's perspective
"I think OpenFeint's developers will be very excited," explains Eros Resmini, OpenFeint's SVP marketing & developer relations, talking to PocketGamer.biz.
"It's not a significant change from their point of view. We're focused on consistency, especially for smaller developers."
In keeping with GREE's existing strategy, the plan is to offer developers common APIs to support in their games while making the most of customer opportunities in terms of regional or even a per country approach for social and payment methods.
This is in contrast with GREE's Japanese rival DeNA, which offers its Mobage platform in Japan, while rolling out the more universal Mobage Global and Mobage China for the rest of world, although it has ambitious plans for its unified developer platform.
"We're building on the experience of GREE Japan but it's the best of both worlds," Resmini continues.
"It's important to recognise regional differences in terms of social networks and popular games."
Indeed, this could even extend beyond OpenFeint's current support for iOS and Android, with Resmini holding out hope that if Windows Mobile - with especially with the backing of Nokia - gains enough audience in places such as Europe, in time, it too will be included in the new platform.
[source: GREE]
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Contributing Editor
A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.
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