Abstract
Platforms have become important both as a business form and as an industrial structure.
However, the methods for forming platform strategy have not been developed well. In this
paper, we address the strategy of Japanese online social-game-platform companies. The online game industry in Japan is fast changing, and some of the companies in the industry show high performance while the others do not. We first propose a framework to analyze the mutual dependency between gaming platforms and complementary game-developers. Then, we apply the framework to three Japanese social-game-platform companies. The proposed framework is an augmentation of dynamic capability theory for platforms. The dynamic capability of the high-performing game-platforms allows the companies to both (1) sense and seize the driving complementary partners and (2) attain deep amalgamation of the platform with complementary partners. The findings will provide any company of a clue when it develops its own platform-based business.
