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The video and computer games market is now worth billions of dollars. As more and more Indian homes get wired, there are opportunities galore for the enterprising. Will India, known for its software and animation skills, be able to increase its market share in the global gaming pie?
India is fast emerging as a key one-stop destination for game development on the world map. Nowadays, the country has more than a finger in this lucrative pie. Industry analysts believe that by the end of 2006, 529 million people across the world will play interactive TV and PC games, promising to open up a multi billion-dollar opportunity for the Indian developers and rephrase the India's global IT scenario. The gaming industry consists of two major sectors-video games and computer games. While the computer games market has been dominated by a single standard, i.e. the PC, the video games market has been dominated by proprietary standards: Sony's PlayStation 2, Nintendo's Game Cube and Microsoft's Xbox. The few Indian players in this space are concentrating on both segments. Most Indian developers-Dhruva Interactive, Paradox Studios, Indiagames, Mobile2Win and Escosoft-have the global wireless gaming market-worth a staggering $550million (Rs 2,475 crore)-in their sights. All of the big Indian development companies have distribution and marketing partners abroad and 75 to 80 per cent of their turnover comes in from the international market. But why India is up on the chart in this segment? A typical game title today takes around 24 months to make and will have a production budget of $4 -10 million (Rs 18-45 crore). The game industry is under increasing pressure to reduce development time and the cost of production. Reason enough for major publishers and studios to look at outsourcing development. This is where the Indian game developers-animators, musicians and content providers-with their world-class quality and game development experience step in. India has excellent programmers and the rapid growth of the market is adding to the allure. India has carved a niche for itself even in the console market originally dominated by giants like Sony's Playstation 2, Nintendo's Game Cube and Microsoft's Xbox. Another overlapping segment has opened up with the advent of online functionality in the computer and video games market. Nearly 1.5 million people in the United States played games online using their Playstation 2 or Xbox console in 2003, and the number is expected to touch 5.4 million in 2007. With online connectivity, data can be updated constantly by downloading content, making the game fresh and relevant throughout the session. The console and PC based online gaming are separate non-competitive markets. Console games are more action oriented and graphics heavy while PC based games tend to focus on role-playing and first person viewpoints. Through the years, Indian developers have shown a great amount of expertise in building games for this world. Indian companies cater to online only game sites as well, with titles delivered via download or streaming technologies rather than on a disk. Big names such as AOL, MSN and Yahoo are joining the likes of Shockwave and RealNetworks to offer online gaming communities. Online only games tend to be simple, often based on puzzles, board games and quizzes. Of course, there are many impediments before the market can really scale up. The console gaming market (which is how gaming is played in most countries) is conspicious by its absence, because it costs a lot of money to buy them and the games are expensive. Online gaming has also not taken off because of poor broadband connectivity, without which multiplayer gaming is not possible. And no one wants to get into the CD-ROM gaming market because of rampant piracy.
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