Mobile gaming is fast becoming a popular past time and a stress
buster for millions of mobile users across countries. The growth in the
mobile-gaming market shows that the users have discovered a new way of
entertainment and the service providers have hit the proverbial pot of gold.
Mobile gaming represents one of the key elements of mobile,
multimedia-rich entertainment and is a lucrative market opportunity for the
industry players. Recent researches show that gaming is definitely the next 'in'
thing in the mobile-entertainment segment. With voice services chipping in very
less to the revenue, due to stiff competition, value-added services (VAS) are
the chief revenue-generation areas for the telecom service providers and mobile
gaming definitely tops the charts as a potential area that can and should be
explored by the service providers.
The Global Playground
Recently, the mobile-gaming industry has experienced an encouraging increase
in activity. After the American game developer Jamdat Mobile's resounding
success with its IPO, the videogame behemoth Electronic Arts, after years of
ignoring cell-phone gaming, announced its intention to feed the mobile-phone
market. In May 2005, Electronic Arts announced its plans to release eight new
mobile games over the year. According to IDC, sales in US in the year 2004 were
around $394 million and according to some industry leaders, it is expected to
reach $1.8 bn by 2008. Wireless World Forum (W2F) values the mobile games market
at $1.9 bn in 2006.
Mobile
gaming has already proved immensely popular in Japan, where people are happy to
pay to download relatively simple games that can be played anywhere. Japan and
Korea are two of the major mobile gaming markets and together currently
represent 64% of the total value of the global mobile games market.
Significantly, Japan accounts for over half of the global market.
In South Korea, mobile games already account for as much as 40%
of operator revenues and mobile games together with adult content will be the
two major revenue generators for entertainment-based services by 2009.
Usage of mobile game services is high in Europe. In a recent
Jupiter Research survey, 32% of online consumers had played games on their
mobile phones. However, only 3% had paid to download mobile games. Mobile phone
penetration is close to saturation point in most European countries. The focus
of the industry has shifted from attracting new users to the churn rate among
existing users. Mobile content, including games, could be what drives customers
to buy a new handset or change networks. Although users in these countries have
yet not accepted the idea that there could be more to mobile phones that just
phone calls or SMS, mobile games are steadily increasing in popularity, and
telecom operators, content developers, and aggregators are banking on them
becoming a major money-spinner.
Mobile games continue to be fast growing in terms of both
revenue and popularity for the Asian mobile operators, driven by the wide range
and rich content of games. In some markets like Malaysia, mobile gaming is now
the top revenue generator for the cellular companies.
Informa Telecoms & Media projects that total global revenues
from mobile games will increase from $2.6 bn this year to $11.2 bn by 2010, with
15.2% of people downloading and playing a game on their handset by the end of
the decade. The potential of the industry can be gauged by the fact that by the
year 2009, there are expected to be 220 million mobile phone gamers in the
world.
The Indian Awakening
In India, mobile gaming has not yet reached the critical mass to be called a
mass-market phenomenon, but it is close. According to market estimates,
presently the mobile gaming market is estimated to be 110 crores to 135 crores.
The subscriber base is growing phenomenally. In the second quarter this year,
India's subscriber base has increased by 7.67 mn as compared to 5.16 mn in the
first. The month of September itself saw the subscriber base reach the 65.05-mn
mark. It is clearly evident that with this growth and the rate at which mobile
gaming is gaining popularity, Indian service providers and vendors should start
preparing to hit the jackpot. Another major reason why mobile games are catching
up is that they are cheap, simple, and easily accessible as compared to the
traditional console gaming.
A
study by In-Stat/MDR has predicted that India's mobile gaming market will rake
in $336 mn by 2009. This can be attributed to the fact that India has a large
youth population and many urban areas are adopting the mobile culture. Even the
villages prefer mobiles to fixed lines, to avoid poor wire-line infrastructure.
The study also expects that India will make up one of the significant markets
for mobile multimedia in the future.
Presently the scenario is such that the mobile phones form
almost the entire mobile gaming market. According to Gautam Advani, director
Multimedia, Nokia India, " Since we started a couple of years back, Indian
mobile gaming has come of age now. In the first half of 2006, there will be a
lot of effort on gaming and a lot of excitement will happen around then."
Nokia has been a leader in installing gaming enabled phones and plans to explore
mobile gaming dramatically in next year.
In India, service providers such as Bharti, Idea, Hutch,
Reliance Infocomm, and Tata Teleservices have started offering these games. In
2004, Reliance Infocomm launched a multiplayer game suite on R World. Multiple
RIM customers can play games with each other anywhere across India, over
Reliance phones. Tata Indicom also tied up with Nokia for launching a mobile
gaming package, with a collection of 1,000 games. Hutch India too has expanded
the mobile gaming market in India through an offering of over 250 Java-based
mobile games. Hutch users can download any of the 250 mobile games using the
GPRS service. "Mobile gaming is the single most exciting application on the
GPRS networks, it is bigger than mobile music and might exceed the number of
downloads being done, says Mohit Bhatnagar, senior VP, new product development,
value added services & alliances, Bharti Tele-Ventures.
These games provided by the services providers are a mix of free
and paid games. They also provide the choice of one-time downloads or to playing
the game online. Mobile games that are being offered in India are fairly simple
and this tend has sent game designers back to the 1980s-style games, with their
simple rules, straightforward graphics, and deceptively deep game play. It is
being seen that 'Indian' is the current flavor of mobile gaming themes as
people here are more familiar with the Indian characters, legends, and icons.
Games based on Hollywood, Bollywood themes and comic characters; cricket; and
other sports are popular. Bharti offers Batman Begins, Master Blaster Sachin,
KBC-2 besides puzzles and games such as Sudoku. Hutch offers Spiderman, Rahul
XI, Karpov Chess, and Rubik Cubes to just name a few.
Gaming is catching on not only with the younger generation but
with people of all age groups. Mobile gaming is no longer limited to hardcore
gamers, mobile users in India are playing games to kill waiting time, while
traveling, and even at homes. It was seen that mainly the lack of sophisticated
handsets restricted the user from playing these games. With new and advanced
handsets available today, the mobile gaming market is expected to expand 700% by
2010. The survey also found that the subscribers in India were much more
enthusiastic about mobile gaming and tend to get hooked once they play a game.
The boom in the mobile gaming market has brought smile on the
faces of mobile game developers too. Mobile2win, IndiaGames, Mauj telecom, and
Paradox Studios are coming out with innovative new games and are tying up with
the service providers to provide gaming options to their subscriber base. The
biggest challenge that these game developers face is to keep pace with the new
mobile phones hitting the market at an alarming rate, as the games have to be
customized to each handset.
India is one of the key markets in the next big wave of growth
in mobile multimedia, and is a multi million-dollar market, both in terms of
software development and end-user consumption. In-Stat/MDR estimated the Indian
mobile gaming market to be 5% of world market in 2004. Thus mobile gaming is the
rising star of Indian wireless market and will be instrumental in development of
strategies by service providers and vendors to develop new revenue sources in
the wireless market other than voice calls and simple text messaging.
The game is on, and the stakes are high. Now it's up to the
Indian service providers, vendors and developers to emerge as winners or remain
mere bystanders and let the world go by.
Sonia Sharma
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