How to see "Japanese version of Facebook" through a hand swim back to the dead

This article by the Japanese game industry analyst Serkan Toto recently published in personal blog. He said that Mixi, the Japanese version of Facebook, had experienced a 16 million-dollar annual loss before launching a tour of "Monster Marbles", but now it is expected to have reached $2 million trillion in operating profits for the year to March. What's going on in the middle of this? The following is his main content: Mixi, a well-known social networking site with the Japanese Facebook name, had an IPO in 2006 and was identified as the first "Web 2.0 Enterprise" to embark on the IPO road. For a long time, Mixi had maintained a steady growth situation until social and gaming companies such as Dena, GREE, Twitter, Facebook and line started competing with Mixi, and Mixi to stop the pace of their innovation before it changed. In fact, in 2011 or 2012 years or so, many Japanese users believe that Mixi is actually on the verge of collapse. In May 2012, Mixi's share price fell to 1500 yen, a 10% drop from the company's peak in 2008. Of course, Mixi will naturally not be in the fight, and the company has tried several times to save the company during this period. For example, Mixi has reached a partnership with the portal and network Community Mobage, teamed up with one of Japan's most influential gaming software providers, Salome (KONAMI) to launch mobile gaming network platforms, collaborate with Japan's Twitter, aggressively explore the US market, acquire a range of start-ups, and appoint new CEOs , seeking VCs and launching new services such as E-commerce, photo sharing, online dating, etc. Mixi's moves, however, have barely worked, and the company's share price has remained weak, with shares hitting 1000 yen lows in mid-November 2013. Back to the dead. However, Mixi ultimately succeeded by a bold move to revive the company's decision to develop mobile games on its own. Among them, a "monster Pinball" (Monster Strike) game in three months after the launch in Japan's domestic iOS user group has harvested a very good momentum of development. Moreover, Japanese users are not only scrambling to download "Monster marbles", but are also willing to pay for the game. It should be noted that Mixi had not done much marketing to the market before. As a result, "monster marbles" in the iOS platform to pay for the application of the rankings are climbing. On November 18, 2013, the game ranked only 136 digits, but by November 20 it was 43rd. On December 10, "Monster Marbles" in Japan's local iOS platform pay list ranked 27th. Also, December 10 is also the Mixi share price broke 9000 yen trading, which means Mixi is back in the ranks of the 1 billion-dollar market. Serkan Toto, a veteran Japanese gaming industry observer and independent advisor, Sercan-Toto, said in his blog: "Mixi do this only by virtue of a single platform, and only in the Japanese region," The Monster Pinball game. "After that, Goldman Sachs issued a negative assessment report on Mixi, which directly led to a sharp fall in the company's share price in the following week." But Mixi's share price is still on the rebound soon. The chart below is the Mixi share price change for the year ending March 2: In order to keep the "monster marbles" hot, Mixi released the Android version of "Monster Marbles" last December. Like the iOS version, the Android platform's "Monster Marbles" has also brought a lot of revenue to the company, and such a huge success has caused a certain impact on the Mixi company. February 13 This year, Mixi announced the appointment of "Monster Pinball" game Research and Development Studio director Hiroki Morita as the company's new CEO. According to Mixi officials, as of February 15, "Monster Pinball" including iOS and Android platform cumulative number of players have reached 3 million, of which 500,000 people are in the 16 days before the count to join this player army. To ensure that the game continues to develop its own momentum, Mixi is also starting to invest in the most effective marketing tool in Japan: television advertising. February 28, Mixi expressed the hope that through the public issue of shares to raise 64 million of billions of dollars, and will formally launch their own TV advertising marketing strategy to stimulate the "monster marbles" game sales. Judging from the present situation, Mixi's strategy seems to have been successful. "Monster Marbles" is currently the third-place iphone application in Japan, ranked seventh in the Android App store. To be fair, Mixi's core product, the social-networking performance, remains sluggish. But from a commercial profit point of view, "Monster Marbles" has become a great boon to Mixi. Specifically, Mixi had just experienced a 16 million-dollar annual loss prior to the launch of "Monster Marbles", but now the company's operating profit for the year ending March is expected to reach $2 million trillion. Although "Monster marbles" has not yet achieved similar "Wisdom Dragon Fan City" (Puzzle and Dragons) for developers GungHo such a boost, but it has helped mixi at least to increase its market value to 1.1 billion dollars. Game experience So, in the Japanese market so popular "monster pinball" is what kind of game? It should be said that "monster marbles" may be a mixture of RPG and action-type game between the works. Players can control the arena in the gameFour monsters and use them to withstand enemy waves attacks until the last boss appears. Although the overall idea of the game sounds trite, the actual gameplay experience is quite good and the design style is quite innovative. For example, players need skills to attack different monsters, players can use their skilled operation skills to try to get the combo to maximize attack, and we control different monsters to different types of enemies have different damage value. In fact, the game of "monster marbles" is precisely the latest popular game in Japan. For example, players can collect monster cards in "Monster Marbles", build defensive towers, make more powerful weapons through several monsters, have built-in gacha mechanisms, and include some special game links. It should be noted that the "monster Pinball" also built-in multiplayer mode, that is, can allow up to four players to join hands to resist the enemy's attack. Moreover, "monster Pinball" in the multiplayer game mode is not a traditional player to play, but a relatively rare player cooperation mode. If the player is used up in the game, as long as any one player to contribute their physical value, the arena can continue to play the game, and some of the props in the game can only be obtained in multiplayer games. But for now, multiplayer mode only supports connecting via Bluetooth. Sercan-Toto says it is unclear how Mixi will improve and expand the "Monster Pinball" game in the next few years, but Mixi has reached a partnership agreement with Tencent outside Japan, which will be the sole agent for the distribution of Monster marbles in the Chinese market. (Tencent Science and technology author: Ruijie)