India plays on, ranks No. 3 globally in game installs

While news of Bengaluru beating San Francisco in terms of confidence to go digital is still fresh, Unity Technologies and Nasscom Game Developers Conference (NGDC), in the first ever Unite India conference, said India ranked third in terms of global game installs, surpassing markets like Brazil and Russia.

San Francisco-based video game development company Unity Technologies is known for development of its licensed game engine, Unity. In its report along with NGDC, the company said its creation engine currently reaches close to three billion devices globally. The company said Unity had been installed more than 16 billion times in 2016 alone.

The report with NGDC, Emerging Trends in India Gaming Industry, said the Indian gaming Industry will touch $801 million by 2022. In 2016, it was at $543.08 million and seeing a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.61 percent.

The report was unveiled on November 9 at the Unite India event in Hyderabad.

Quentin Staes-Polet, Director of South Asia Pacific, Unity Technologies, said that based on the company’s findings on the ongoing market trends and development in the India Mobile Industry, it had concluded that

The mass adoption of high-end mobile devices will give the Indian gaming ecosystem ample opportunity to innovate and provide compelling content to development platforms.

Mobiles driving gaming industry growth

Rajesh Rao, Chairman of Nasscom Gaming Forum, said that driven by the extensive growth of cost-effective, high-end smartphones, and the 4G revolution that began last year, the Indian mobile gaming market was seeing rapid growth. The key reasons are:

1. Every Indian with a smartphone today is trying out games, and Rajesh believes this isn’t just restricted to young people.
2. The report added that the developer ecosystem was maturing rapidly with several high-profile games developed in India seeing international commercial success.
3. There has also been strong interest in the Indian market from venture capitalists.
4. A report by Gaming show added the Indian gaming industry is valued at $890 million and growing at 14.3 percent annually with mobile gaming making up 71 percent of the pie.

“As a result, we expect this growth to increase and help the budding Indian gaming industry become one of the leaders in the global market,” added Rajesh.

Unity Technologies claims that with 87,000 games made with Unity, the company sees 2.4 billion installs across 1.1 billion devices globally.

Young audience

The key rise in gaming in India is driven by:

1. Higher disposable income
2. Younger population
3. Growing infrastructure
4. Deeper penetration of internet and smartphones

Unity Analytics research identified the following trends in the Indian gaming industry:

1. Card games, Word games and Sports games are the top three genres by time played per day in India in 2017.
2. Adoption of high-end mobile devices has changed the Indian gaming market in the last few years, which now includes over 200 game development studios, and service providers.
3. User engagement sessions reveal that non-gaming genres such as social, medical, financial, food and beverage and travel are growing faster in the application development industry.
4. Today 95 percent of the games are mobile-centric.

“The more mobile penetration happens in the country, the more gaming will become a part of the mass market,” said Rajesh.