At E3 2012, GREE used its first appearance at the show to promote its mobile social gaming network and signal ambitions beyond Japan. Then-GREE International CEO Naoki Aoyagi said the Western network was still in open beta and that the company was showing 21 games spanning Japanese and Western developers.
Why GREE went to E3
GREE announced its first E3 appearance on February 9, 2012, saying it planned to present its social mobile gaming platform and games. The company’s own announcement framed the show as a place to demonstrate how gaming had evolved from arcades to home and mobile technologies; it was a statement of intent, not an independent assessment of the platform.
For GREE, the trade show offered a prominent setting to build its US profile while it sought users outside Japan. In the GamesBeat interview, Aoyagi described the booth as a way to demonstrate the company’s commitment to the Western market. The interview was published June 10, 2012, and the page was updated June 18, 2025; its statements about the company’s plans and business conditions refer to 2012.
What GREE showed
Asked about the E3 lineup, Aoyagi said, “We have 21 games.” He described a mix of Japanese and Western content from GREE and third-party developers, presenting the selection as evidence of a broad international slate rather than a single flagship game. “We wanted to give the message that we are going global with a great variety of content,” he said.
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The platform itself was not yet a finished Western offering. Aoyagi said, “We’re still in open beta in the Western market for our mobile gaming network, so we still need to do some work.” That qualification matters: the booth showcased GREE’s direction and catalog while its Western network remained in beta.
How the global strategy was supposed to work
Taking a Japanese mobile business abroad
Aoyagi tied GREE’s international push to the spread of smartphones, which he believed made it easier to bring mobile games across national markets. In a contemporaneous Japanese-language interview with Dengeki Online, he said preparations for expansion became more concrete around 2010, as GREE grew more confident in its Japanese mobile social games and smartphones became more widespread. This was his company’s rationale in 2012, not a present-day forecast about mobile gaming.
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Broadening the audience through Funzio
GREE presented its acquisition of US-based developer Funzio as a way to add local development experience and reach audiences beyond the company’s comparatively casual portfolio. The Dengeki Online interview described the acquisition as part of an effort to make games for Western players, including more hardcore audiences. In strategic terms, GREE was combining a platform-and-ecosystem ambition with acquired development capacity and games intended to broaden its appeal.
Buying visibility and acquiring users
The GamesBeat interview also put the E3 booth in the context of a larger US marketing effort. It reported that GREE planned a $50 million US advertising campaign; Aoyagi estimated the E3 booth cost about seven figures per year. Those are figures reported in a 2012 interview, not current spending levels. He also discussed user acquisition costs, monetization, and competition as challenges in translating GREE’s Japanese experience to Western markets.
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What the interview’s numbers do—and do not—show
Aoyagi described GREE’s past growth by saying it had reached a $1 billion market capitalization in 2009 and $1 billion in revenue in 2011. Those are his retrospective figures in the interview; the sources cited here do not independently verify them. The interview also mentions more than 500 people attending a GREE party around E3, another detail that illustrates the scale of the company’s event presence rather than proving commercial success.
These statistics belong to the company’s 2012 expansion story. They should not be read as current financial data, proof that the Western strategy succeeded, or evidence of what happened after the interview. Aoyagi’s comments about market growth and the next 18 months likewise describe expectations at the time, not outcomes established by this interview.
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Why the E3 appearance mattered
GREE’s presence at E3 was a bid to make mobile social games visible within a major game-industry event and to present the company as an international platform, not simply a Japanese publisher. The 21-game lineup, the open-beta caveat, the Funzio acquisition, and the reported marketing ambitions together show the shape of that pitch: combine a cross-market catalog with a Western-facing network, then use promotion and development resources to attract users. The interview documents the ambition and the strategy as stated in 2012; it does not establish the later performance of either the network or the games.
Sources: GamesBeat interview with Naoki Aoyagi; GREE’s February 2012 E3 announcement; Dengeki Online interview with Aoyagi (Japanese).
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