mig33 + GREE = Expectations Galore

Wed, Apr 20, 2011

When two stalwarts of the worldwide internet forum come together, there automatically is a lot expected from such an alliance. This alliance between mig33 and GREE Inc. took place this year on April 13th, wherein mig33, the world’s largest mobile-first community, announced an agreement with GREE, a major Japanese social networking service provider. The contract signing was made for the purpose of adopting the GREE Platform for smartphone, by which mig33’s community would be open to a vast array of social game developers throughout Japan and far beyond.

Benefits and expectations of the deal

The deal opens up new markets and consumers for game developers who can sell their games which were developed for GREE customers, to mig33’s 47 million and more registered customers.
Though both GREE and mig33 have had deals struck earlier there is a lot that can be achieved through this alliance - mig33 brings mobile community and entertainment to billions of consumers residing in the emerging, mobile-first markets throughout Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East and Africa.
A golden opportunity that game developers can cash-in on is the fact that the alliance unclenches a fantastic break to monetize in the untapped market of mobile-first countries. Talking about the same Steven Goh, CEO and Co-founder, mig33 said, “Our unique merchant model has been successful at monetizing users in markets previously difficult to reach and the opening of GREE Platform for smartphone will provide opportunity to the social games developers to monetize that large and potential audience.”
mig33’s Game Developer Program which was announced on November 3rd, 2010 provides full API integration support, significant promotion opportunities, virtual goods options, and a generous revenue share to game developers.

Enthusiastic developers were not short of comments when this announcement was made. “Kooky Panda is delighted to be participating in the launch of the GREE Platform for smartphone along with mig33. Not only will it dramatically ease the integration of our games onto the mig33 network as well as increase user engagement, but it will also enable Kooky Panda to expand our distribution through the GREE Platform for smartphone globally”, said Cherry Wu, CEO and Co-founder of Kooky Panda based in Beijing, China.

Also Alvin Yap, Founder and CEO of The Mobile Gamers also added, “We’ve been having a blast working with mig33 on bringing social games to their users. I’m sure with the upcoming API release we can deliver games with better social experiences and better monetization opportunities”.

Understandably there are a lot of benefits and expectations that are drawn from this ‘huge’ deal. But it is not always that a deal like this would work ‘like a charm’. From the above pointers there is elaboration largely on mig33’s benefits than GREE’s. What GREE gets from this partnership is not debated upon and apart from revenue sharing; there isn’t a major benefit for GREE. Also, as stated earlier not all deals work well unless both parties are happy with each other, trust one another, are satisfied with all terms &conditions of the deal and see success in the long-term. For now it only seems as though mig33 has a lot to gain from. GREE unless has huge plans lined up for the future that can take advantage of the alliance with mig33, there does not seem to be a lot of benefits for them.