Gaming ain’t no frivolous business, it’s as serious as can get.
Sample this –
Some of the big game providers in China and Korea are looking at becoming Telcos, because they have bigger subscription numbers, they have the back end, the CRM, the billing systems etc. Already into the business of supplying interactive content, they now want to add voice too!
Recently IBM Global services, business practice leader for digital media Asia Pacific Quentin Staes Poet was in Mumbai. At a special gaming round table with select media, Quentin discussed the potential that Gaming held in India. His presentation which was packed with charts and global statistics was impressive. An interactive session, the round table dwelled on trends and topics related to Gaming both globally and in India.
Amongst them were,
Trends – Consumer Preferences
The console rules in the North American market, sales are though retail stores. Online gaming is the name of the game for Korea and China. India, its too early to say but Mobile is tops. Lan games too are popular.
Bandwidth Issues? Will online gaming suffer in India due to boofy bandwidth? Or will MP (MULTI PLAYER) make way for MMP (Massively Multi Player)?
Look at it the other way round! Probably bandwidth might get a shot in the arm due to gaming. PC prices in India are dropping, economy is booming. Middle Class salaries growing substantially. Within 1-3 years time Online Gaming could drive growth of internet. Broadband usually takes off when it is 1.5 times the price of narrowband. The Internet backbone in India is as well laid out and as good as any other place in the world. The last mile is still a problem.
What’s lacking?
Cyber Caf?© chains that aggressively market their services. India doesn’t have aggressive Cyber Caf?© chains that are bullish on gaming.
Gaming Portal’s – China’s got em, Korea’s got em bigger. India’s not got any so far.
Who plays games?
Besides hardcore gamers, there is a growing number of females and elders who are joining the Gaming brigade. Their preference are however different and casual games are getting big Online. This is a global trend and has relevance in India too. Another exciting genre are e-learning games.
Serious Games! Are you Joking?
That’s another evolving genre in gaming. Non entertainment games used by sectors like Military, Defense, Education, Science, Government and Health. For further proof check out the GDC WEBSITE and look out for the serious games summit link.
What else to watch out for in Indian gaming?
Interactive TV. Gaming can emerge as the killer app for interactive TV. iTV has been lurking in the shadows for quite a while now and threatens to disappear. A growing number of people believe that iTV will never take off in India. But there is an equal number that believes it will. With new Mpeg 4(H264) video compression around the corner, you never know what might happen.
Following is an Animation ‘xpress quick Q&A with IBM’s Quentin.
1. Please elaborate on IBM’s strategy towards digital media, globally and in India?
The move from analog to digital in all media industries is primarily responsible for our interest. Our business is to manage that transition. Looking at all the solutions that we can offer in Software, in hardware or services.
In the early stages we started out with the publishing people. We provided them with the technological backend to help digitize their content. We created content management solutions and also the middleware.
Around 4-5 years ago video got digitized. Things like tapeless environment and search capabilities came into existence. We started with BBC, CNN etc and now we do that with customers across the world.
When you look at the media content producer, we are now looking at delivery. We are also looking at gaming and at telcos. If content companies don’t get tech savvy and work business models around emerging technology, they run the danger of getting napsterised a la music industry. Besides the commercial entertainment content, there is a voluminous amount of personal content too that’s being circulated nowadays and needs to be managed.
In fact p2p content is huge representing 50% of internet traffic. Digital media is the core of data transfer.
World over which Gaming organizations has IBM been involved with and for which projects?
NHN in Korea. Japanese game giant Koei. – Infrastructure for online gaming and associated services. We do a lot of work on grid computing. Which is very useful for gaming getting into a seamless environment with high scalability.
We also work with the 3 console companies (Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft), we’ve done micro electronics and developed processors for them.
IBM is also involved with companies like Warner Bros Online, the MMORPG for Matrix, the backend for that is managed by us. We do the blade servers and database for Arenanet on Guild Wars.
We also do a lot of Linux Computing. We are looking at service deals where we take over the backend.
In animation there is lot of work around server farms, linux clustering and gridding. We have worked with Weta. In India we work closely with Crest Animation.