Where do you see PC gaming in India, now that consoles are becoming increasingly popular?
The PC as a format is as large as any of the consoles – that’s 30 per cent of the market. In 2007, PC gaming worldwide had a revenue of $10.3 billion. If you look at the pie, 30 per cent of this came from packaged goods, the regular boxed products; 70 per cent was a mix of MMOG, casual and online digital sales. If you regionally split it, close to 50 per cent came from the Far East – Korea, China etc. So I would say about $4 billion, which is a large chunk of the online business, is coming from the Asia region. That is one business model. How successful that will be in India I’m unsure about. I think we mirror more of North American and Western European trends. So I think we will progressively move to an online model, but that will only happen once the console side offering becomes stronger.
If you look at the Indian market, the foundation is PC games because you have a far deeper penetration of PCs in homes in India and PC games are far cheaper in India than anywhere else in the world. These factors lend favourably to the popularity of PC games. We have quite a big range of PC games available at great prices. Launch dates may not be the same as elsewhere, but this varies from publisher to publisher. If you were to compare what genres are working in India, they are the genres that are typically strong for consoles. Sports, racing and action games are really strong on consoles and by virtue of the fact that you didn’t have consoles in the country or the prices to make them attractive, people were forced onto the PC platform. We’ve clearly seen that in the last 2 years with the success we’ve had with the PS2.
If you look at it on the face of things, the PS2 is at the end of its lifecycle, so why would it work? But that’s where India is so different. We came into 2006 with 99 per cent piracy with games selling at Rs 30. There has been a lot of containment and anti-piracy measures taken by Sony in conjunction with IMI, we’ve got the local manufacturing strategy in place, and we’ve got PS2 games to Rs 999 and below. So if you look at PS2 price points, they’re very similar to PC prices. A new game like FIFA 09 will release on PS2 and PC for Rs 999. Catalogue games are at Rs 499 just like PC games, granted some PC games even sell for Rs 299. Hopefully in the coming years, PS2 will move there. If you go to retail today, what is happening is the PS2 has taken away a large chunk of shelf-space which was originally dominated by PC games. To my mind that is a trend because the retailers find console games far easier to sell because they are plug and play. There are no system issues. You don’t have customers coming back and telling you that it doesn’t work on their machines. The retailers in our games business, barring a handful, don’t have the knowledge and we don’t have the time to provide that assistance.
So to my mind, PC gaming will start seeing a shift to how Europe is panning out, where u have more RPG and strategy games, whereas, given the choice for sports and racing games, chances are they would pick a console version. Today if you were to choose between an Xbox 360 game for Rs 1,999 or a PC game for 1,299 without having to upgrade hardware, what would you buy? But I think PC gaming will still stay strong in its present form in the coming few years. I don’t think growth will be as high as in consoles, because console base was much lower. But I think in terms of favourable inclination dynamics, yes, there is some negativity around PC games, where as there is huge amount of positivity around console games, more specifically PS2 and PSP.
Are you planning to bring in any MMOGs?
We are. We will make an announcement in October. We are working with one of the leading MMO players.
Can you give us a name?
October.
How will that work? Will it be paid? Will it be through expansion packs? Which model will work for India?
Obviously, free-to-play will work. We all like free content. So while there is a successful subscription model with World of Warcraft and there are communities and a lot of support, to what degree that will grow beyond the hardcore audience is a question mark. So even though it’s a strong franchise, I don’t think the subscription model will be successful in the short run. Therefore if you go with a game that is free to play and then there are other ways to generate revenue, like microtransactions, etc, I think that stands a better chance and has mass appeal. That’s really when you make a business out it. If you’re selling to 1,000-2,000 core users, that isn’t business. But India is never a sharp hockey stick curve of growth; it’s always a slow burn. So it will require a lot of work. And people like LevelUp have done a lot of hard work, Sify has done stuff, and Zapak too I’m sure will come into the MMOG space in time. While we have cyber cafes and game cafes, its nothing like Korea and China, where people use these places to hangout and socialise. But as we go into the future, it’s only going to grow.
Next Page: Game pricing and release dates in India
