Rakuten and Blackstorm launch HTML5-based mobile games platform

Some of the titles available on R Games at launch. Photo credit: Rakuten Games.

Rakuten, the Japanese tech dinosaur that made headlines last year when it decided to shut down its ecommerce sites across Southeast Asia, is getting into a new line of business: browser-based mobile games.

It’s launching a platform called R Games today, which was developed together with US-based startup Blackstorm.

At launch, R Games has 15 titles, including re-envisioned versions of beloved classics like PacMan and Space Invaders. It will allow third-party developers to promote their games on its platform later.

R Games contains a variety of social features, allowing players to compete against each other and solve challenges. It also ties in with Rakuten’s loyalty program, which means Rakuten Superpoints can be spent on in-app purchases.

New hope for HTML5

R Games is a Tokyo-based business entity formed as a “joint spin-off” between Rakuten and Blackstorm, says Ernestine Fu, one of Blackstorm’s co-founders.

Blackstorm specializes in HTML5 development and is the brainchild of PhD candidates at the Stanford Research Institute.

“We see ourselves as a post-app store company,” Ernestine says. She believes that Apple and Google’s app stores won’t control the distribution of mobile apps forever and that new distribution platforms will arise. These are most likely going to be what Ernestine calls “super apps” – widely popular apps like Facebook, Line, or WeChat.

Mobile games developed in HTML5 have the advantage that they can be played from any device, and even from within other apps. This is in contrast to native apps which have to be built for specific mobile operating systems.

Blackstorm has already raised US$33 million in funding, including from Rakuten and Alsop Louie Partners. The venture capital firm is known for investing early in gaming startups that went on to see exceptional success, like Twitch and Niantic Labs.

Ernestine Fu, co-founder of Blackstorm and board director of Rakuten Games. Photo credit: Rakuten Games.

Focusing on games first, Ernestine wants to prove its hypothesis that the time is ripe for HTML5 apps to take off.

[pullqoute]Japanese tech firm Gree tried, but failed, to launch an HTML5 games platform in 2012[/pullquote]

Prior to setting up R Games with Rakuten, Blackstorm tested this in a partnership with Facebook. Everwings was among the first titles to launch as one of Facebook’s Instant Games in November last year.

“Instant games are games inside the app,” Ernestine explains. “When you click on the game, you are downloading it through HTML5, but it doesn’t seem that from the user experience perspective.”

Not the first to try

HTML5 has been touted as an alternative to native apps for a while.

Japanese tech firm Gree tried launching an HTML5-based games platform in 2012, but in 2014 admitted failure and rolled back to native apps.

Ernestine and R Games CEO Shigenori Araki think it’s mostly a matter of timing and that the advantages offered by HTML5 make the technology an inevitable component of the mobile ecosystem.

“No downloads. No installs. Just tap and play: that’s what excites me most about HTML5 gaming,” says Shinegori. “It’s clear to me that the time has come for HTML5.”

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