作者：Dr. Serkan Toto

关于日本社交游戏市场（游戏邦注：主要包括GREE、Mobage和Mixi等几大手机社交平台）规模究竟有多大，各方面的看法差距甚大，众说纷纭。以下是日本政府、市场调研公司Seed Planning以及Yano Research三方提供的相关数据：

DeNA

1）日本政府

日本总务省在去年7月发布了一份关于手机内容和服务的报告，虽然并没有明确指到社交游戏市场规模，但已指出日本2009年的手机游戏市场（包括社交及非社交游戏）规模达884亿日元（约合10亿美元）。

该报告还显示，2009年手机游戏和社交网络的虚拟道具销售同比增长了185%，达到5.08亿美元；而在2007年，该国手机内容的虚拟道具销售额仅为6800万美元。

2）Seed Planning

去年12月份，市场调研公司Seed Planning的报告表明，2010年日本社交游戏市场规模达到14.6亿美元，其中虚拟道具销售额占据12亿美元，预计2011年社交游戏总销售额同比将增长49.3%。

3）Yano Research

市场调研公司Yano Research曾称2009年日本社交游戏市场规模达4.06亿美元，预计2010年将双倍增长至9亿美元，2011年则将增加至14亿美元。

social_gaming_market_japan

从以上三者的数据可以看出，各方的数据出入较大，外人难以准确把握日本社交游戏市场的具体情况。

据称日本社交游戏巨头DeNA仅一年的手机社交游戏收益就达到13亿美元，如果再GREE和Mixi两者的总和，日本社交游戏的实际市场规模一定远远超过上述相关数据。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

How Big is Japan’s Social Gaming Market?

by Dr. Serkan Toto

I regularly get asked how big Japan’s market for social games (deployed on GREE, Mobage, Mixi etc.) actually is. The short answer is it depends on who you ask – and you should be careful which numbers to rely on.

Let’s just look at 3 sources:

1) Japanese government

In July last year, the Japanese  Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications published a report [PDF] on the country’s market for mobile content and services.

The report doesn’t mention social games per se and ignores the (relatively small) domestic market for PC-based social games. It does say, however that the mobile games market (social and non-social) in Japan was worth 88.4 billion yen ($1 billion) in 2009.

The ministry also reports that the market for virtual items in mobile games and social networks grew 185% to $508 million in 2009 (year-on-year). By way of comparison: In 2007, virtual items accounted for just $68 million of the mobile content business.

2) Seed Planning

In December, I reported on numbers coming from market research firm Seed Planning in December. To recap, Seed Planning says sales in Japan’s social game market are worth $1.46 billion in 2010, with virtual items accounting for $1.2 billion (rest through ads). Seed Planning expects sales to grow 49.3% in 2011 year on year.

3) Yano Research

According to market research firm Yano, the social game market in Japan was worth $406 million in 2009. Yano expects it to more than double to $900 million in fiscal 2010 before reaching $1.4 billion in 2011:

social gaming market japan How Big is Japans Social Gaming Market?

As you can see, the numbers differ widely (there are other sources suggesting other numbers).

That’s one problem.

The other point I really don’t get is why these numbers are that low, seeing that DeNA alone makes $1.3 billion a year, largely with mobile social games. Without even mentioning what GREE and Mixi generate with social games, shouldn’t all the numbers listed up above be much, much higher?（source:serkantoto）