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Round Up: Japan Mobile, WAAT Media, Landau & AGC
by Jason Dobson
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July 20, 2006
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Today's Gamasutra round-up includes news of Japan's mobile gaming industry, WAAT Media adding mobile entertainment executives, and Jon Landau delivering a keynote at the upcoming Austin Game Conference, as well as the latest GameSetWatch posts, product news, Serious Games Source news, and Gamasutra job postings.
- According to information from Japanese Nikkei Business Publications tech site Tech On, as partially translated by popular consumer website GameSpot, the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication has reported that the region's mobile industry has seen a significant increase of 39 percent since last year, equating to 722.4 billion yen ($6.1 billion). According to the report, mobile sales grew to 315 billion yen ($2.7 billion), an increase of 21 percent over the previous year. In addition, sales of ringtones and real-music ringtones combined for 161 billion yen ($1.4 billion) in sales. Finally, the report noted that the nation's mobile gaming market has seen a slow but steady increase, and has more than doubled over the past several years to 58.9 billion yen ($503.6 million).
- Mobile media company WAAT Media announced that it has added two mobile entertainment executives to expand its recently acquired mobile games business, Charismatix, and oversee the strategy and execution of the company's global business. Michael Steuer, who served as the Managing Director of wireless products at THQ. and General Manager of Minick USA a company partially owned by THQ Wireless, will serve as the company's vice president of mobile games. In addition, Tom Chamberlin, who was the sales manager at Telescope, is WAAT Media's new vice president of SMS marketing.
- Organizers of the Austin Game Conference announced that producer Jon Landau will deliver the event's Thursday keynote address 10 am, September 7th. Jon is the COO of Lightstorm Entertainment, and has produced a number of other major motion pictures. Other recent speaker additions include: Warren Spector, Al Lowe (speaking at the Game Writers Conference), Daishiro Okada (speaking at the AGC Asia track), Howard Marks (speaking at the Casual Games Conference), and others. Additionally, organizers also confirmed the Dell Precision ArtZONE, an artist training facility in the Technology Pavilion on September 7th and 8th. The ArtZONE training will free to conference attendees on a first come first served basis.
- The latest updates on Gamasutra sister weblog GameSetWatch include a collection of vintage game mag advertisements, a GameSetWatch exclusive interview with Adventure International's Scott Adams, and new information about forthcoming PC MMO Pirates of the Burning Sea.
- Also updated today: Serious Games Source news, including a V.Space kid-safe gaming app, plus Gamasutra product news including a new RPG report and distribution for Strange Agency and the release of Cell BE SDK, version 1.1 by IBM, alongside the latest Gamasutra job postings, featuring openings from Blue Fang Games, Day 1 Studios, Electronic Arts, Iron Lore Entertainment, LucasArts, Pandemic Studios, and Spacetime Studios.
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