Please have a look: www.kantangames.com

To be clear, I could not get into all details and all my thoughts on the company, but please have a watch:

One of the most critical steps for foreign mobile game studios entering Japan is how to tackle user acquisition (UA) in Japan – and over the last 15 years in this business, I have seen the most incredible things when it comes to UA (many of them very, very bad for the studios).

(We can talk about concrete examples next time you see me at an event out there in the world.)

There are a lot of topics I could cover about the uniqueness of doing UA in Japan, i.e.:

• The prevalence of flat 20% commission fees as a general rule
• The “interesting” role of dominant players such as Dentsu and CyberAgent in UA in Japan
• The level of gossiping about foreign clients among the different UA providers that are theoretically supposed to compete with each other (i.e., if you try to play hardball with provider A, they might tell provider B and C and D the next second)
• The significance of TV advertising in UA in Japan (yes, it still works and is still being used aggressively)
• The “Junior UA expert” with no experience they might put on your account as a foreign studio without a clue about Japan

The Dominant Role Of Agencies In UA In Japan

One major unique point in this context is the critical role agencies play in the Japanese market.

Among Japan’s mobile gaming companies, UA is typically outsourced to advertising agencies – often in full and with adjacent activities such as traditional marketing, PR etc. on top.

This includes almost everybody, including the several publicly traded, large-cap mobile game studios in Japan: Needless to say, these companies do have staff with UA or marketing expertise in-house, but the heavy lifting is typically handed over to outside agencies.

These agencies handle the entire UA spectrum for their clients, i.e. ad buying, consulting, data and analytics, influencer relations, creatives, managing dashboards, partnerships (i.e. with brands for collaborations), etc.

It is a stark contrast to the West, where mobile game companies usually not only have most or all of their UA activities internalized but view their UA teams as valuable assets that they need to stand out in and compete in a cutthroat market. (I realize Western studios, too, hire UA consultants or agencies – but again, nowhere near the same level as in Japan).

The usual suspects in the Japanese UA space include the aforementioned CyberAgent and its subsidiaries, Septeni, Adways or Carta Marketing Firm (formerly known as Zucks). In several forms, the “traditional big 3″ Japanese agencies Dentsu, Hakuhodo, ADK (now part of Korean PUBG studio Krafton) do play a role, too.

For foreign game companies planning to enter the Japanese market, it is critical to understand not only the UA landscape itself but also the role of agencies within – and, most importantly, which one to choose.

As an ending note, I can say from experience that most of the times, foreign studios can start by exploring the Japanese market “remotely” first – meaning without a local agency, as the range of UA channels to reach Japanese users has become more global in recent years. An “upgrade” to cooperate with a local agency is always still possible later, i.e. if the time has come to go “full-on Japanese” on local ad networks, local social media or TV.

If you are interested in discussing business related to gaming, Web3 and Japan, let me know and we can meet up in person.

Please get in touch via Email (Serkan at kantangames.com), LinkedIn or X.

I made this video to provide some background on who controls the Pokemon brand, ownership of The Pokemon Company in Japan and a quick look at Pokemon financials such as sales and profits.

The Japanese government’s official gazette just released a set of financials for the fiscal that ended on February 28, 2025:

• Net sales: 411 billion yen (US$2.9B) + 38.1% on the year on a yen basis
• Operating profit: 100 billion yen (US$700M) + 13.6%
• Net profit: 70 billion yen (US400M) + 12.2%

This is the first time The Pokemon Company reached an operating profit of 100 billion yen, and net sales were never higher either.

What is interesting is that last fiscal year saw no blockbuster Pokemon video game launch: the main driver behind these numbers is the release of free-to-play mobile app “Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket” in October 2024 with partner DeNA.

The sums may seem low in dollar terms because of the currency conversion rates right now.

Furthermore, it is unknown how revenue and profit sharing between The Pokemon Company and its owners Nintendo, Creatures Inc. and Game Freak Co. Ltd. actually works – and how this affects the financials above.

It is public information that Nintendo holds 32% of voting rights in The Pokemon Company.

The idea for this video came with the recent news that Square Enix’ No. 2 investor is now Singapore-based 3D Investment Partners – which now owns a whopping 7.73% of the studio.

While things do not look great for many studios in the West, things are very different in Japan – and I was shocked how little people in the industry still know and understand about the third biggest gaming market in the world (which is a probably a positive for a Japan game industry consultant like myself).

The mass layoffs and studio closures in North America and Europe really have not spilled over to Japan, apart from isolated exceptions that are a drop in the ocean compared to the storm the industry is seeing in the West currently.

The “magnificent 8 Japanese AAA studios” are (generally) still hiring and are even raising salaries (the salaries in gaming in Japan are still terrible, but that’s a topic for another day).

What I would like to highlight here though is that despite what has been happening in the West, the shares of the majority of publicly traded AAA game companies in Japan have reached all-time highs over the last weeks:

• Sony: hit all-time high of 3,904 JPY on February 18, 2025
• Nintendo: 11,800 JPY on February 19, 2025
• Konami: 19,645 JPY on February 19, 2025
• Capcom: 4,100 JPY on February 21, 2025
• Bandai Namco: 5,297 JPY on March 21, 2025

To make the list complete, here are the Japanese gaming stocks whose all-time highs hit more than a while ago:

• Sega Sammy: 4,980 JPY on March 7, 2006 (price today on March 25, 2025: 2,995 JPY)
• Koei Tecmo: 2,995 JPY on September 17, 2021 (today: 2,072 JPY)
• Square Enix: 7,566 JPY on June 21, 2023 (today: 6,872 JPY)

There are certain macro trends playing a major role here (political initiatives like corporate governance reforms in Japan, weakness of other Asian stock markets like China, currency effects, etc.), but the five aforementioned AAA game companies have been doing their homework and performing very well financially over the last few years.

Generally speaking, Japan’s two console platform and hardware providers are winning big time: Sony pulverized Microsoft with the PlayStation 5 this generation, while Nintendo built up its own part of the market with the Switch that is on its way to become the best-selling console of all time.

On the software side, Capcom is in its golden era and seems to land blockbuster after blockbuster, Konami sees early success revitalizing its console IPs after a streak of mobile game hits in Japan and also abroad (with a range of Yu-Gi-Oh apps and more importantly eFootball’s 800 million downloads), and Bandai Namco just boasted record-high sales and profits across all their businesses such as video games and toys.

PS: I am not counting Kadokawa, as subsidiary From Software typically contributes just around 10% to the company’s total sales.