Rating: Mobile social networking aiming for 1 billion users
Talk about ambitious targets. GoMo News has just been chatting with Japan’s GREE. The company is aiming to attract one billion users and in doing so will go head to head with the likes of Facebook. The best bit is that the company is absolutely confident of succeeding. GREE founder and CEO, Yoshikazu Tanaka told GoMo News he expects to reach the target within three to five years. He is basing his calculations on the success of Facebook which presently has 800 million users and is adding100 million a year. What is GREE’s secret weapon? The answer is games.GREE offers its social games by developing some of them in-house and through partnerships third party developed games. Tanaka even mentioned that his company provides financial support for developers.
In its first phase – by liaising with seven major developers in Japan, the company expects to build up a portfolio of 8,000 titles.
As a demonstration of the company’s clout, GREE held a press conference today [21st February 2012] with two leading French games developers: – Ubisoft and Gamesoft.
Deborah Papiernik, a direct with Ubisoft, revealed that it will be realing a new title this year – Assassin’s Creed 3 – which has been three years in the making.
Naturally, Ubisoft expects to enjoy major success with this title through its association with GREE. To date, the company’s focus has been on games consoles where it has sold 38 million copies of Assassin’s Creed.
However, 25 per cent of Ubisoft’s revenues currently come from online sales and that sector is growing by160 per cent annually.
So the future obviously lies in free to play, mobile online games.
