The gaming industry in India is slowly carving a niche as a segment in itself with major players in the gaming arena like Microsoft, Sony, Ninetendo, to name a few, taking various initiatives to make gaming popular in the India market.
Also the increasing PC penetration is working as a catalyst and is helping the sales of PC games. While the console games have their dedicated followers, online gaming is picking up. Apart from this a new segment is the massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), which includes games like Ragnarok and World of Warcraft. Though it has been successful in Asia, it is yet to be widely noticed in India MMORPG is picking up in India, but there are challenges to tackle such as the requirement for huge bandwidth and high costs. The success of these to a great extent will depend upon the pricing.
According to a Nasscom report, the market for gaming is expected to witness a CAGR of 78 percent and reach $ 300 million by 2009 from $ 30 million in 2005.
The gaming market in India is slowly growing out of is infancy stage with the big companies and private players now looking to leverage upon this. Most of these players seem to be quite optimistic and deploying various strategies to capture this as yet widely untouched market in one way or the other. The best example is the recent launch of Xbox 360 in India and which is poised to compete with Sony’s Playstation. This can be labelled as ‘one of its kind’ of first launch in India.
However, there are a few impediments that are stifling this segment’s growth, the foremost and the most critical one is that of piracy with its vicious grip on the Indian gaming industry. This scenario is now slowly changing with the various initiatives taken by manufacturers, associations and the community showing positive results. But it still has a long way to go and the manufacturers will have to bring down the high cost of games and other softwares if the piracy has to be curbed.
The graphic cards market, which has seen tremendous growth in recent times due to its attractive pricing, provides a glaring example. The game developers should understand this and should introduce affordable products in India and then definitely the scenario will narrate a different story.