india is not new to video games, contrary to general perception. It started with those little vintage coin-operated video game parlours that we enjoyed playing Street Fighter and Metal Slug on, during a trip to a hillstation. Today video games are far more accessible, even on devices such as mobile phones. India houses a ‘mature’, yet limited, or should we say, bottlenecked, video games industry. The Rs 1500 crore (as of 2013) industry reached the landmark in a not-so-generic way, but one that is characteristic to the consumer habits.
Those 64-bit “Media” boxes that were introduced in the early ’90s were a big hit. They ran on cartridges that housed dozens of games. These cartridges sold in lakhs. While they were not cheap, they were still very much within the average consumer’s reach. “It was a good time for us. We all made a lot of money then,” says Hardeep (name changed to protect piracy privacy), a Palika Bazaar store owner. There are countless Indians who can relate to classic games like Mario, Contra and Popeye on that platform, from that era. “Kids used to visit our stores on the weekends, excitedly dragging their dads behind them from shop to shop.” That’s when video games were reaching Indian households; the foundation was being laid.
And then came the PC boom. Personal computers (desktops) sales were seeing an exponential growth, and with that came the easily- overlooked PC gaming base that erupted as a result. Only a handful of international video game publishers considered India a serious market. The big ones were still not officially present in India. This led to a gradual rise of the “pirated” games ecosystem. India houses the largest pirated industry for video games in the world. Pirated game CDs used to sell for anywhere between Rs 50 – 100. Almost everybody with a PC knew about Road-Rash, The Sims, Need For Speed. Although big game publishers might call this a “loss of excessive revenue”, these pirated games became the eventual enablers. You could find a pirated version of just about any title. “Some people used to come and buy 20-30 games in one go,” continues Hardeep.
Then came the PlayStation. While not immediately as successful as the 64-bit consoles, Sony’s first-ever console experienced an eventual boom. Even today, as we head to the era of the next-gen consoles (the PS4), the PlayStation 2 continues to sell in strong numbers, all thanks to the plethora of pirated choices the consumer has. Sony introduced Rs 500 price points for PS2 games, but why pay such a princely sum when you can get the same experience for Rs 50? The Rs 3,000 average price that PS3 games command is still far-fetched. The PS2 is now the highest selling console in India, and has a wide reach in even the furthest of Tier II cities. PlayStation India boss Atindriya Bose revealed in 2011 that Sony has sold more than 10 lakh PlayStation units (all generations), and more than half of that comprises the PS2.
The Indian Olympic Association is recognising Indian ‘e-sports’ professionals and sponsoring their trips to international championships. India now has its own gaming professional, Santanu Basu, who represents the country at major events.
More positively, as the Indian GDP struggles to regain pre-recession growth rates, the video games industry remains ambivalent. The FICCI-KPMG Indian Media and Entertainment Industry Report 2013 published a record 16% growth in the video games industry over the previous year, the net worth of which rose to Rs 1500 crore (Rs 15 billion / $277 million). The report goes as far as to say that the games industry in India will grow at a 22% CAGR, to surpass Rs 4000 crore ($776m) by 2017. That translates to the video games industry in India almost tripling itself in only five years. These are some serious numbers.
The overall picture of the games industry does look promising, but it’s not all bells and whistles. The console industry, while expecting to grow at 28%, could only manage an 8% growth. An “overall sluggishness in the economy impacting both unit sales and attach ratios” is the reason stated by KPMG for this. The console segment, however, still holds the largest chunk in the overall figure.
Where has this growth come from? The only segment that has seen a growth this massive is the mobile phone industry. The Internet & Mobile Association of India estimates that 50% of India’s mobile users have access to gaming content on their devices. India is now the world’s second largest mobile handset market (after China), and is poised to eventually become the largest.
BYOC (Bring Your Own Computer) 2012, New Delhi
But that doesn’t change the fact that PCs and consoles house mega prospects in this country. Piracy is on a downfall. “You can’t pirate PS3 games. PC and Xbox 360 do have pirated variants, but there is still a general sluggishness in the sale of pirated games,” says another Palika Bazaar shop owner. The PS3 has an encouraging exchange ecosystem set around it. “People sell their old games for a fraction of the MRP and buy new second hand games. They prefer original games now, because it enables online modes and game updates.” When asked whether this holds for the PC, he adds “we do sell some old pirated PC titles, but people now generally prefer original games.” In comparison to their console variants, PC games make less of a dent in your wallet (costing less than half, in most cases), and now with online retailers such as Game4U and Flipkart offering great deals fairly frequently, original games are being sold in moderate but consistent numbers.
This has finally caught the attention of international publishers, who are now more confident about supporting the Indian market. Most major games like Grand Theft Auto V Highly Compressed Check out All Compressed Games, Gran Turismo 6 and FIFA 14 have countrywide midnight launch events, attended by sizeable audiences. Ubisoft (the world’s largest developer and publisher) has set up a studio in Pune where it develops handheld games. The local game development scene is growing quickly, with new studios popping up frequently.
The Indian Olympic Association is recognising Indian “e-sports” professionals and sponsoring their trips to international championships. India also now has its own gaming professional, Santanu Basu, who represents the country at major events. Basu has represented India in tournaments such as the Asian Indoor and Martial Art Games (South Korea), HKESports (Hong Kong) and Games 13 (Dubai) recently.
Bring Your Own Computer (or BYOC, as it is more popularly known in gaming circles) is a computer gaming event organised annually in New Delhi, which is garnering its own fan following. The event is attended by gamers from all corners of the country, and prizes worth lakhs are up for grabs for the winners of the competition.
A handful of game design colleges have also sprung up in the past half-decade, and they have a good intake of budding game designers and developers. DSK Supinfocom is one such game design college in Pune. With a campus spread across 20 acres of land, the college offers world-class game design training, with faculty visiting from leading game-making companies around the world. These are serious signs of video gaming rooting itself in the core of India, its youth.
Sony is now gearing up for the PlayStation 4 launch in the country. It holds high hopes with its latest console, but knows that it will be a challenge to see numbers like those seen in the West, where the PS4 has already shipped more than 12 million units. The PS4 will cost around Rs 45,000 in India, which is not cheap by any standard. Games for the PS4 will cost approximately Rs 4,500 a pop, which is, again, a fairly steep figure. It will be interesting to see how the country embraces the next-generation consoles.
Credits: Sahil Arora from : Sunday-Guardian.com