As 2016 begins to fade into memory, we’re taking a look back at the events that have dominated the last 12 months in mobile gaming.
I believe, that the Indian ecosystem will grow much faster:
India is seeing an aggressive push of 4G as we speak and data prices have dropped considerably with enhanced internet speeds on the go and this would give mobile gaming massive boost as 60% of the devices being sold are already 4G enabled. Number of 100 million casual gamers in India is set to explode with 4G adoption and is set to cross 300 million mark in the next three years. In terms of content, global games like Candy Crush/ Temple Run/ Subway surfer still dominate the market; however in the last year, Indian gaming market has seen the emergence of multiple local genre based games e.g. local vehicles simulation & local card /board games and these games have managed to maintain rank in top 50 Free charts in the Android ecosystem.
The Indian gaming market has seen 40 per cent YOY growth in IAPs (inter app purchases) albeit on a small base and India continues to be overshadowed by China’s large mobile gaming market size and the higher revenue growth in south Asian countries. However, the growth of casual gamers is very reassuring for the local developer ecosystem as it signifies green shoots for having large local audience of pro gamers who are going to convert into payers within games succumbing to the competitive peer pressure in multiplayer mobile gaming in the coming years.
Indian Gamers continue to grow with India becoming # 5 globally in terms of downloads
We believe that domestic market growth in gamers is fuelling the confidence of more product oriented gaming studios to emerge from India. We are seeing a growing number of quality consciousness developers which are focused on creating a highly engaging game and wanting to run product companies and not so much rely on the so called services business. The product and quality thinking is being validated by the increasing investment in gaming studios in India with sizable follow on rounds. This is a great testimony to the confidence of the investors in the developers’ business model and their production capabilities. The similar sentiment is evident in more developers being sought after by global and local publishers.
We believe that India has seen two defining moments in 2016 – first is the aggressive push by telcos towards 4G adoption leading to data being offered free or next to free to the consumers and second is massive push towards digital cash and physical cashless transactions. The above two factors have a direct bearing on the future growth of mobile gaming
- More gamers, as their tribe follows growth of data and smart phones
- Develping the paying online habit in consumers which will translate to IAPs within the game eventually.
These two events would make the domestic market very exciting for the local developers and with the aggressive support of Google Play and iTunes teams to support and promote local talent in India and globally, it is going to be great time to be an indie developer in India.
We are confident that India is going to produce many more globally successful examples from the Indian developer ecosystem. Overall investment activity in Indian gaming studios will increase and already funded studios will attract sizable follow on rounds.
Given that virtual currencies are a still as habit formation stage for a large mass of India, we think that companies offering legal real money gaming would gain lots of traction in India given that it has already seen the success of companies offering Rummy / Fantasy games etc.
(These are purely personal views of Nazara Games, CEO, Manish Agarwal and AnimationXpress.com does not necessarily subscribe to these views)