DeNA, Gree Slump as Gamemakers Team Up on Marketing; the alliance will allow the companies to bypass platforms such as DeNA’s Mobage and Gree

August 22, 2013 Leave a comment

DeNA, Gree Slump as Gamemakers Team Up on Marketing: Tokyo Mover

DeNA Co. (2432) and Gree Inc. (3632), Japan’s biggest social-game operators, slumped in Tokyo trading after gamemakers led by Sega Sammy Holdings Inc. (6460) said they would team up to promote each other’s titles for smartphones. DeNA, operator of the Mobage network, plunged as much as 9.3 percent to 1,924 yen, headed for the biggest decline in more than three months. Gree dropped as much as 7.5 percent. Sega, creator of Sonic the Hedgehog, developed a system to allow makers including Capcom Co. (9697) and Taito Corp. to display advertising of mobile app games by other members, Koji Ueda, a Sega spokesman, said by phone today. The Nikkei newspaper earlier today reported the alliance will allow the companies to bypass platforms such as DeNA’s Mobage and Gree. Gamemakers pay a commission to companies such as Gree and DeNA for games accessed through their platforms. “Overall, we view this as negative” for Gree and DeNA, David Gibson, a Tokyo-based analyst at Macquarie Group Ltd., said in a note today. “Developers continue to shift their resources away and not use recently launched app marketing initiatives announced by Gree/DeNA.” DeNA traded at 1,949 yen, down by 8.1 percent, as of 1:14 p.m. in Tokyo, extending its drop this year to 31 percent. Gree traded at 838 yen and has lost 37 percent this year, compared with a 30 percent advance for the broader Topix index.

To contact the reporter on this story: Naoko Fujimura in Tokyo at nfujimura@bloomberg.net

Filed under TMT Trends

Unknown's avatarAbout bambooinnovator
Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

Leave a comment