The first coupon was a 30 yen discount from Lawson’s signiture sweets, Premium Rollcake.ĬyberAgent also launched a special website on Ameba for the upper house election which will take place on July 21.
Lawson opened an official account on the site and delivered coupons that could be used at its stores, of which there are over 10,000 in Japan. Back in May, Japanese convenience store Lawson, launched an O2O advertisement campaign on the social game Pigg World. As a platform with over 15 million users, brands now seek to promote their business on the service, even politicians sometimes as well. These currencies are used to purchase items for user’s avatars, which is a major source of income for the company.Īmeba Pigg has successfully pulled off what Second Life attempted to do. Ameba Pigg’s users are so enthusiastic that recently a middle school girl was arrested for stealing virtual currency from friends’ accounts.
According to a study over on Game Business about a year ago, the breakdown of monthly active users was about 35% men and 65% women. This community is especially popular among the younger generation, especially women. After creating an avatar on Ameba Pigg, users can play around in the virtual community and chat with friends. The virtual community was launched back in Feburary of 2009, and has over 15 million registered users to date. Go to the Business Insider front page for more stories.Ameba Pigg is a virtual community operated by Japanese tech giant CyberAgent, perhaps most famous for its Ameba Blog platform. Get the best of our site emailed to you every weekday. * This article was updated after publication to include comment from Tencent's TiMi Studios and from TikTok owner ByteDance. "Blindly investing into such grand and illusionary concepts such as the metaverse may ultimately come back to hurt your pockets." "Investment is not a virtual game," warned the report. Last month, state-owned media outlet Security Times cautioned against investing in the concept, which is still in its infancy. Officially though, China may not be so enthusiastic about the metaverse. It's a race to the forefront of the space, which Bloomberg Intelligence estimates could be worth $800 billion by 2024. Other Chinese tech firms starting to jostle in the space include short-video-app owner Kuaishou, video-streaming service iQiyi, and electric-carmaker Li Auto, the AFP reported. Alibaba did not immediately respond to an Insider request for comment.
TikTok owner ByteDance is also seen to be taking steps into the space with the acquisition of VR startup Pico Interactive.īyteDance told Insider that it's "optimistic about the future of VR."Įcommerce giant Alibaba, too, has joined the fray by registering several trademarks - including "Ali Metaverse" - related to the buzzword, according to tech media reports last month that cited database information. "An open world game, on console and PC, is currently a strategic priority," the spokesperson added. The spokesperson said the company has "no intention to discuss any trendy words," but is "dedicated to the exploration of the future form of gaming." A TiMi Studios spokesperson confirmed to Insider the set-up of a new global game development studio, F1 Studio.