Top Japanese Social Devs Make $1,000,000 Per Month

I think the headline is very misleading, it's (of course) about how much revenue each developer is generating for the business, not how much they're making (as a salary).<p>Perhaps obvious to native speakers of English, but it got me to click the link since it sounded Too Good To Be True.

The ARPU for mobage town is higher because these games are just for Japanese mobile phones (using flash lite). Because Japanese phones have integrated billing (you buy something and it shows up on your phone bill), and Japanese are used to paying for content, it is much easier to get users to buy something vs. the credit card payment. I've heard the mobile has about 10x the conversion rate of credit card.<p>The other thing is these are companies that are producing these games, not individuals. So the top developers are putting a lot of money into the games as well.<p>Finally, with Zynga having an estimated revenue of 50 million dollars per month, a million dollars per month sounds like a drop in the bucket.

zen zen wakaranai...

And they're probably paid $30,000 a year!<p>Well maybe not these particular guys, but a typical Japanese software developer's salary is shockingly low.