Author: Dan Gendro

goGame is receiving millions in funding from Sega Networks which decided against opening an office there.

While Sega Networks could just as easily have opened up its own office location in Singapore, it has chosen to place its mobile games brand under the control of a startup there called goGame, under its head, David Ng.

The developer has been recreating its mobile gaming strategy for several months it chose to invest in the startup.

The choice will allow Sega, a Japanese company that specializes in video and mobile games, to allow goGame to spend its energies on localization, marketing and customer service, while it keeps it resources dedicated to its own top priorities and strengths. In that light, it has made a multimillion dollar investment into the Singapore company and announced this choice at an event in the new office of that startup business.

Sega has shown a massive amount of trust in this investment of its mobile games through goGame.

By the time of the writing of this article, no precise amount of the actual investment had been disclosed to the media. It was, however, pointed out that Incubate Ventures, Japanese VC firm still in its early stages, also contributed to the investment in the startup.

The CEO of goGame, David Ng, said at the launch party that “People keep telling me that I’m crazy. To build Gumi to the global stage for three and half years and then just leave. People said, why did you leave? Who in their right minds would leave? But I’m excited to show you what I have.”

Ng is no new entrant into this space. His flagship product called goPlay has changed the way developers are able to launch, market, and support their mobile games through a convenient drag and drop service that is free-to-publish. Now, with goGame, it is possible for software development kits (SDKs) to be dropped into a game to fix issues or better the customer management, localization, worldwide marketing, payment and even 24/7 live operations of a game. Alternately, if a developer were to attempt to use the traditional means of replicating the SDKs on their own, it could take as long as months, depending on what the purpose of the change is meant to be.

According to the results of a recent study, more people mobile shopped over the holiday weekend than ever.

According to a recent study from the National Retail Federation, there were more people who used m-commerce over the Thanksgiving and Black Friday long weekend than has been the case in any previous year.

The online survey showed that online retail saw a considerable online shopping spike, particularly over mobile.

The research took into consideration the shopping habits of over 151 million people who said that they had shopped in stores, online or over m-commerce over that weekend launching the holiday shopping season. Many retailers took care to offer the same deals over their websites that they had to offer in store, allowing consumers to be able to make the purchases they wanted without having to wait in line in the actual shops. The survey itself was conducted on behalf of the federation by Prosper Insight & Analytics. It indicated that approximately 102 million people had said they shopped in store on the Thanksgiving weekend.

That said, even more – 103 million people – said they shopped online and over m-commerce channels.

The survey also showed that even by the close of the weekend, there were still 121 million people who had intended to shop online and over mobile commerce on Cyber Monday. While this is a significant number, it should be pointed out that it is actually a reduction when compared to the 126.9 million people that had intended to shop on Cyber Monday after having done so over the Thanksgiving and Black Friday long weekend.

According to figures reported by the Wall Street Journal, this year, consumers spent an estimated $4.45 billion over online and mobile commerce channels on Thursday and Friday, alone. Black Friday sales increased by 14 percent when compared to the figures from 2014, according to the data shared by Adobe Systems, Inc. That online and m-commerce figure is based on purchases made in about 4,500 locations across the United States. Adobe’s estimates were also that over half of online shopping occurred over smartphones, further underscoring the importance of mobile devices for retail shopping.