The Future of Gaming in India

There was a very interesting article quite a while back (back in 2003 when Micorsoft was considered a toddler in the Game space:-)) in Express Computer India..
The author is talking about game-development.
The author is splitting the segment into Video and Computer games - That was then - Today i would rather keep it as one entity, namely "Video Games" and further split it into 2 other segments, based on
a) Platform of Game Offering (Covering Consoles (Xbox, PSx), PC, Handheld (Nitendo, Gameboy) & Mobile)
b) Category of Game Offering (Adventure, Action, RPG, Strategy (focus on Corporate strategy), Arcade, etc)
I would then re-read this article below keeping in mind these as the segments and well the concept stills holds true, viz., Potential in India!!

Article titled: Can India play in this goldmine:
http://www.expresscomputeronline.com/20030210/focus1.shtml

Excerpts under page 2 (Potential) and i quote:

"The few Indian players in this space are concentrating on both segments. These include Dhruva Interactive, Parado Studios, Indiagames and Escosoft. Though the segment does not boast of a Infosys or Wipro, the potential is undoubtedly huge. Says K Rajesh Rao, CEO of Dhruva, "Globally, the games industry is under increasing pressure to reduce development time and cost of production.........."

Also an interesting Presentation was made by the abovementioned Rajesh Rao, CEO Dhruva Interactive, to the Hon'ble Commerce minsiter in 2004 (I don't know who that minster was and probably we don't care as well)..

Title: The gaming phenomena arrives in India, A presentation to the Hon'ble Commerce Minister by K Rajesh Rao..

http://www.ficci.com/media-room/speeches-presentations/2004/june/june5-rao.pdf

Vis-a-Vis 2003/2004 and cut back to 2007/2008, If we can find where we are today, in India w.r.t outsourced Game Development and Testing companies in India, that would be great. Between then and now, is it still a goldmine ( i suppose it is ) and most importantly "Why the hell is Wipro and Infosys staying out of it??" :-)) (I guess the answer to this latter could be "They never thought of it" - Let's remember that in India "a game developer" still would find it difficult to get marriage proposals, leave along business proposals :-)

As of Jan 2008, i have the sales figure YTD 2007 pegged at $18.8 billion as per the latest link-:
http://www.npd.com/press/releases/press_080131b.html

The facts and figures do suggest that a venture would be successful.

Games developed in India!

Once again, Paradox Studios - I found this link and found the screenshot to be terrific
http://us.animationxpress.com/anex/y2k4/headlines/anex48.htm

Paradox studios apparently launched India's first 3D action game: Battledust : The championship" - I saw it received a 2.5 star rating here..
http://www.techtree.com/techtree/jsp/article.jsp?article_id=53460&cat_id=540
(though i couldn't find it on amazon - maybe didn't look hard enough).

I was quite zapped that I, being an Avid Gamer (Though of the adventure titles - not much into action with advancing age:) myself, did not even know about this game until recently..
I believe the launch was done amid fanfare (with the then launched Movie Jurm's cast present!) but nothing much after that?

Why?

I did some research on Mr. Anurag Khurana, the then CEO of Paradox Studios. This is what i found:
He was a BSC Grad in the early 1990's who launched his own venture Netillennium Technologies Pvt Ltd toward end of 1999 and had a 1.5 year stint, got tired of it and joined as CEO of Paradox Studios Pvt. Ltd and with the power of Reliance behind him, served from 2001 to 2005, close to 5 years and then MOVED ON! He moved as VP in Kreeda India Pvt Ltd and Lo! Behold! in 4 months, moved out as CEO of RedOctane Technologies Pvt. Ltd which is based out of Chennai.

This man is awesome - so much of momentum and so much of moving around, gaining exposure but not many know him as much!

Wireless Gaming

I was researching Games developed entirely in India and i found the following link
http://www.gameguru.in/mobile/2006/10/paradox-studios-snaps-madhavan-for-mobile-games/

Apparently Paradox Studios, a division of Reliance Infocomm (ADAG), is developing Mobile Game titles based upon Madhavan, based upon the Fighter Pilot character he portrayed in Rang de..
&
http://www.gameguru.in/mobile/2006/25/paradox-studios-acquires-mobile-gaming-rights-of-indian-football-captain-baichung-bhutia/
Paradox entering the Sports Game category and modelling a football game - making a foray into wireless gaming...

I wonder about only one thing -: Bandwidth. Will it be attractive enought for users to use GPRS for wireless gaming in India?