Mobile gamers growing 50 per cent annually

Approximately 40 to 50 million people play games on their smartphones and feature phones, with an annual growth rate of 40 to 50 per cent according to a study that was released at the Indian Games Market Review’ at the Nasscom Gaming Developer Conference on Friday.

The mobile gaming market is currently estimated at $150 million across all revenue models. Additionally, the console market size, is estimated to be around three to four million gamers, with three to 3.5 million of lifetime sales for all consoles including PlayStation 4 and XBox One combined.

The gaming market is also supported by the estimated 3,000 cyber cafes, of which 1,500 have five machines or more dedicated to games.

Nasscom president R. Chandrashekhar said, “Nasscom interviewed the key players in the Indian developer and service provider ecosystem to provide a holistic picture of the growing gaming landscape in India.”

The report provides a road map to start-up’s, Indies and investors based on internet usage patterns, mobile smartphones and tablets, to digital media and mobile advertising,” he said.

The gaming industry is however, according to the report is still in a nascent stage on the content creation side. However, in the last five years over 200 games development studios and service providers have come up across the country.

“The advent of self-publishing, investment and crowdfunding, has led to a new breed of agile indie developers, whose focus is on mobile and PC social games,” the report notes.

They follow a lean business model and 57 per cent of them employ less than 10 people and 27 per cent of them reported revenues of above $1.6 million. The majority, which is about 75 per cent, of them are focused on building games for the global gaming market while 96 per cent of developers work on mobile games, with 61 per cent of those building free-to-play games.