The gaming sector is finally gaining grounds in the country, with the number of people playing both online and downloadable games, growing enormously over the past couple of years. The industry made rapid strides during the previous calendar year – 2007 – and was expecting similar or even greater moves during the next couple of years.
The industry, even though continued to offer free downloads to around 5 million gaming enthusiasts across the country, began heading for profits after moving over to paid regimes. This was a turn around for the sector as revenues were far beneath income, while cutthroat competition was also taking its toll on companies.
Still in a nascent state, industry estimates the online gaming sector to be Rs 800 crore market in the next two years, while console-based gaming is expected to touch Rs 500 crore by 2010. The mobile gaming segment is expected to be the largest contributor to the segment, with it touching around Rs 1,200 crore in the next 24-30 months.
The major players in the industry include Zapak Digital Entertainment, which has over 4 million registered users and around 100 million page views. The company had converted a minor chunk of its free users to paid customers and was looking at setting up over 5,000 outlets in the country. This would result in another 35-40 per cent increase in gamers and revenues in the next couple of years.
Ditto the scene for Indiagames. Under a marketing strategy, the company launched a subscription-based gaming for online users. It raked in over 15,000 users under the scheme.
While Games2win received $5 million venture funding from Clearstone and SVB, another major player Kreeda Games managed to raise funds from IDG Venture India and Softbank.
Raman Roy, one of the pioneers of outsourcing, has acquired UK-based Babel Media — provider of specialist services to the online games and interactive entertainment industry - through his company Quatrro BPO Solutions.
A Pricewaterhouse Coopers' report estimates that the global gaming industry will grow 30-40 per cent to $68 billion by 2012.
The paid downloads figures for mobile games are around 600,000, even though conservative estimates put this at around 50-60 per cent.
According to industry experts, the present mobile gaming market (gaming over mobile phones) stands at around Rs 150 crore. However, a decline in average revenues per user (ARPU) is prompting operators to move over to data based services, and gaming is being looked up at as a service that would provide a monetary relief to the sector.
Advergaming, placing of brands in mobile games, is among the fastest growing segments with companies like Mobile2win developing games to capture the mobile gamer.
Among mobile gamers Nokia N-Gage QD is the Holy Grail. According to Ramesh Sinha, an avid gamer, the pricing factor which is a recent move has not deterred the enthusiasm of gaming. On the contrary, the prices (now companies have begun charging $2-3 per download) have ensured that the quality of the software has risen manifold.
In the country, games based on cricket and Bollywood – the main stay of entertainment for Indian are popular, and among these games based on cricketer Sachin Tendulkar are runaway hits.
However, gaming is also becoming a tool for spreading of social messages. For example, Zapak Digital Entertainment Ltd, an Anil Ambani group gaming portal, has created a game called 'Laadli'. The game, made jointly with a Mumbai-based NGO Population First, is an attempt against sex identification and female foeticide.
The recently launched game (in May 2008) is in a question-answer format and the player is asked to answer the questions based on statistics related to female foeticide and male to female ratio among others.
Gaming majors are also increasingly targeting women as their new set of customers. For example, Games2win has created over 60 games targeted at women and has spent around Rs 4 crore on their development. Another major gaming company, 7Seas Technologies has launched over 50 women-centric games on its gaming portals — onlinerealgames.com and neodelight.com. The company is also planning to launch 50 more games with women-centric themes.
Zapak Digital has gone a step further and has created a sub-site — Zapakgirls.
However, with gaming moving over to mobile phones, developers like Mauj Telecom, 7Seas Technologies and Hungama Mobile are looking at launching of 3D games in the country.
The increased availability of high-end phones like Nokia's NGage and phones with Wi-Fi capability have resulted in the advent of games like first person shooting and one-on-one combat among others. |
