Yahoo! Japan and BoosterMedia have joined hands to offer ‘Western-style’ HTML5 games to consumers in the Japanese market. HTML5 specialist BoosterMedia has culturally localized the games and to ensure its authenticity, it has employed native Japanese staff in its Amsterdam-based Game Studio and its Tokyo office.

Laurens Rutten, founder and CEO of BoosterMedia, said, “Support for HTML5 among game developers, media companies, OEMs and other industry players is rapidly growing. As a result, we clearly see a sharp increase in HTML5 games quality compared to one or two years ago.”

As a HTML5 games publisher, BoosterMedia distributes games in over 30 countries via media companies, traditional games websites, telecom operators and OEMs as distribution channels. Its 350 plus games have been developed by its in-house Game Studio and third party HTML5 game developers.

According to officials, the new BoosterMedia cross-platform games will be accessible instantly on any of the Yahoo! Japan websites via Yahoo! Games. The free-to-play games featured in the first series of Yahoo! Japan belong to casual game genres including puzzle- and match-3 games, bubble shooters and arcade and action games.

Rutten said that although Japan is a difficult market for overseas game companies to enter, the success experienced by Candy Crush in Japan proved there is a lucrative market for ‘Western-style’ casual games. This has encouraged BoosterMedia to enter the game market in Japan in a big way with its partner Yahoo! Japan.

The native games market is looking up significantly in Japan as seen from the popularity of Gungho’s Puzzle and Dragons. The browser games market has grown by almost 132 percent, 229 billion Yen in 2013.

The new cross-platform games from BoosterMedia can be played on smartphones, tablets and desktop PC browsers, unlike many native games. Users have to log in with their Yahoo! ID to save their high scores and also view the leader-boards of other players in their area.

BoosterMedia launched a new website, DoctorHTML5games.com, in 2013 in hopes of furthering the development of HTML5 gaming. The site acts as a primary resource of information for game developers, as well as for those with a general interest in HTML5.