After retrenching about 40% of the team in San Francisco, Japanese mobile games giant GREE announced that the China office will be shutting down as well, with all employees’ final day on 28th June 2013. This news is being reported in all major IT websites in China.
This is somewhat a shocking progress seeing that the major investor in the China venture is Tencent, perhaps the biggest IT company in the country.
In summary, while smaller China mobile games developers are earning millions each month, the amount of GREE China’s revenue is not reflected by the investments made.
The CEO of Rekoo, reportedly China’s biggest social games company, claimed that 1 major factor of the company’s downfall is due to the upper management of GREE China, which comprises mostly of “haughty” Japanese executives.
Other reasons include lack of cohesiveness, and not being quick enough to adapt to the smartphone market (this is something which Tencent’s CEO and founder admitted sometime back).
