The potential market for gaming has emerged over time and its growing popularity can be attributed to the new digital generation. In a country with burgeoning youth and middle class, more than 50% of the youngsters who fall in the age group of 18 to 35 constitute the target audience for gaming.
Changes have been occurring rapidly and dramatically in India’s digital ecosystem. Technology companies are increasing their focus on mobile with each passing day. Gaming sector is one of the biggest sectors that contribute to the digital economy, like it does in China. It has largely contributed to the success of Chinese digital economy since the PC Internet era.
India, with 1.3 billion people and two-thirds below the age of 35, the world’s largest youth population, is poised to become one of the world’s leading markets. Historically, games did not gain a foothold in India due to the lack of access to gaming consoles and PCs, and the low social acceptance of this entertainment medium. This is all changing now as the Indian games industry is at the cusp of a major transformation. Economic growth has resulted in a society that is embracing digital content and entertainment like never before, enabled by the explosive growth of smartphones and affordable wireless Internet.
Games industry continues to be extremely dynamic. PC gaming has always led the games market in terms of innovation and will continue to do so. No other platform meets the increasing desire of consumers to create and share content this well. In the recent times, we have seen lots of brands are launching various exciting and path-breaking products for the gaming world. The Global PC/MMO Market visualizes the rapid developments of the online gaming market in the six most important regions and gives key predictions for the upcoming years. By 2017, the PC/MMO online games market will reach $30.7 billion, accounting for 31% of total global games market revenues. Asia-Pacific shows by far the largest overall revenues.
Is gaming industry is still emerging?
According to Robert Hallock, Head of Global Technical Marketing, AMD,the PC gaming industry is definitely still growing and evolving. For example, data published by John Peddie Research suggests that the worldwide sale of gaming GPUs is growing through 2018. Moreover, they predict that by 2018, gaming GPUs will be more popular than mainstream GPUs ($5-99) for the first time in history. It is clear that PC users are gravitating towards PC gaming more than ever, and choosing more powerful GPUs to do it. It really is a great time to be a PC gamer!
“As the eSports explosion continues, the need for gaming PCs in new form factors is driving demand for high performance SoCs. These would need to deliver both the mainstream family PC experience and the ability to delve into the most popular games in the world today. AMD is uniquely positioned as the only technology provider that offers both SoCs for mobile and desktop as well as discrete GPUs for the scaling of performance demanded by the PC market,” added, James Prior, Product Manager – Computing and Graphics, AMD.
“The PC gaming is still a dominating in the overall gaming market which consists of consoles and now mobile/tablets also. In terms of revenue and variety of games available PC surely leads much ahead. In the slowing down PC market, gaming PCs are still showing good growth. This segment is also not very price sensitive and gamers are willing spend for quality products. The upgrade cycle in gaming industry is also much more faster. Now with VR and AR available for PC games, it will surely boost the PC gaming industry and take it to the next level. The challenges would be competition from mobile devices, as the processing power of mobile devices are increasing the gaming experience is getting better and better. Getting the new generation of gamers into PC games who are used to a mobile devices is another tough challenge,” said,Rajesh Doshi, Director, Zebronics
“Indian gaming industry has really come of age. In the last 15 years, India has witnessed considerable economic growth. This, in addition to its demographic structure, offers immense potential for the gaming industry. An amalgamation of our culture, rising urban incomes, education, IT development and telecom growth offer the perfect platform for the gaming industry. The Industry has been emerging in terms of better games, better hardware support to run the games. The biggest challenge now is not technology but the fragmented approach, because of which acquiring and maintaining an audience for the game becomes challenging. The ecosystem is still not built, hence there lies a huge opportunity. Overall, India mobile game market will be a spectacular war to fight and entertaining to watch, anyway the future is here, and the best yet to come,” opined, Vishal Parekh, Marketing Director, Kingston Technology.
“The gaming industry has and will remain to be extremely dynamic as PC gaming has and will continue to play a pivotal role in leading the way of innovation. We see high interest in gaming and no other platform has been able to achieve the level of content and information sharing. With ever changing landscape of the PC gaming industry, the challenges ahead would be to see how different brands attempt to stay relevant to the needs of the industry, said,Jessy Chan- Sales Director, Biostar India.
“Gaming Industry is emerging and increasing rapidly, it is over $100 billion industry including all kinds of gaming platforms. Today’s a AAA title games have much more than the worth of a Hollywood movie and to run such games smoothly, hardware is key, hence higher end product segment is increasing very rapidly and it has a pace of more than 40-50% growth YOY.
In India, Gaming is also getting popular and we can see a rapid growth in high-end component sales in past 3-4 years, virtual reality is a new platform from this year to drive the growth further on high-end component sales. It would be a great idea if Indian govt would take it seriously and make some policy for gaming cafes and promote eSports in India. If you see in China, they have thousands of i-cafe for gaming and some of the cafés even are such big that they have over 2000 seats to play together. It might be a big industry in India as well if govt is going to take it seriously. In India, the biggest challenge is the Internet bandwidth and cost, it is still a bit expensive compared to other countries and of course the speed is the major bottleneck, any good game has a minimum size of 4-5GB and you can imagine if the speed is slow, how much time it takes to download. Hence gaming is bit expensive in India so far,” said, Deepak of Zotac.
“Gaming industry is already well-established. PC gaming, consoles and now mobile gaming are the facets of this industry. Personally, I believe, the gaming industry is going through a transformation with the changing technology landscape. Earlier, games were distributed via physical format such as CDs, DVDs, etc but with the advent of Internet, newer technologies like Steam have made the connection with consumers direct. This change alone has made it simple to check, buy and play games. Virtual Reality (VR) is the next step forward and one really exciting thing to happen to the gaming industry. In India a good broadband connection is still remains the biggest challenge,” said, Sanket Naik, Business Head, India, Bangladesh & Sri Lanka. Cooler Master
“The gaming industry is still emerging in India. There is a lot more that can be done to help eSports grow in India, the idea is to create a similar platform as our fellows have in more developed nations. The biggest challenge to make this e-sports platform in India is the return on investment for the gamers. We need to make eSports a profession in India to retain the interest of gamers for long term. If we’ll be able to make it a success, then I am sure that other non-gamer humans will get inspired and this community will definitely grow,” said, Himanshu Jain, Acro Engineering Company.
“These days, technological innovation has become synonymous with superior gaming equipment owing to increasing consumer demand for better gaming experience. The phenomenal rise in sales of high-quality gaming consoles has magnified this industry’s impact on the economy as well, estimated to generate over 1 Million Euros in revenue by the end of 2016. There are many challenges that we need to overcome with time in order to provide greater gaming experience. The issue of gender inequality is a major concern in this arena nowadays since most gaming companies market their products to an assumed all-male audience base. However, we are witnessing change in this trend with more and more female gamers approaching this platform, which is good, considering the fact that it is facilitating growth of the gaming industry and maximizing its reach to a wider spectrum,” said, Peter Chang, Regional Head – South Asia & Country Manager – System Business Group – ASUS India.
“The gaming industry in India is at a cusp of change. With the shift in the economic growth in the country over the years, Indians have over the time opened up to the concept of gaming which was initially conceived as a recreational activity and not seen as a serious business. From Logitech’s point of view, the other significant change that we have noticed is the rising demand of the Gaming peripherals in the country. While the professional gaming community still remains a fraction of the society; we see leisure gamers wanting to experiment further with professional gaming devices. Therefore, the challenge as well as the growth sector for the gaming industry in the coming years would be converting gaming enthusiasts in to serious gamers and propelling gaming as a full-time job option,” concluded, Ashok Jangra, Cluster Category Manager, India and South West Asia, Logitech.
Key Potential
“The gaming segment in India is becoming more exciting with each passing year, with many gamers advancing from casual to serious gamers, more platforms to exhibit gaming features, and more events and contests with active participation from gaming hardware and software companies. Also the Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities have seen a boom for Gaming which has earlier tapped only by the Top Tier Cities. Also the prime excitement for any brand shall be to enhance the experience, the experience it builds in the virtual world/ real time. The game has limitations to build the experience, it is the hardware which shall build the full potential. This is where we see huge potential and scope to work further and we are very proud to see HyperX headsets, memory and storage becoming the most preferred brand by professional gamers in India,” said, Vishal of Kingston.
“Gaming have a huge potential, it is growing industry across the globe. In India also, once the Internet speed & cost optimize, the trend of gaming will further increase. It will not be limited to metro cities, it is increasing very nicely in even B, C & D class cities,” said, Deepak Gupta, Country Manager-India, Zotac.
“Limitless! As with any entertainment industry, sky is the limit both in terms of product innovation and commercialization. Newer technologies like 3D, Virtual Reality, etc promise immersive experience and for that gamers are willing to pay a premium. On hardware front, both ATI and Nvidia, have solid looking products in the pipeline that will offer performance to drive these newer technologies seamlessly. We at CoolerMaster understand these trends and our new products are geared towards offering gamers the possibility to build, adjust and customise their systems according to their need,” stated, Sanket of Cooler Master.
“eSports is a way bigger sport globally than any other sport so it defines that it’s a very high potential category,” added, Himanshu of Acro.
“For years since its establishment, ASUS aimed to put an ever-greater emphasis on PC gaming. This process resulted in the 2006 founding of the Republic of Gamers brand (ROG), formed for the sole purpose of delivering the most innovative hardcore hardware for truly dedicated gamers. As a hardware vendor that is in tune with the pulse of PC gamers’ needs and wants, ASUS is in sync with the industry. With the ASUS ROG brand, we take an active part in the global gaming community and want to replicate our success in India as well. Keeping in mind the increasing passion and trend of gaming among individuals, for 2016, gaming will be one of our key focus areas and providing gaming hardware to all the enthusiasts, right from entry level to professional gamers, will be our target,” said, Peter Chang of Asus.
“India’ population currently stands at 1.3 billion out of which 66% of the population is under the age of 35, the key potential therefore rests on tapping the right set of audience for gaming,” added, Jangra of Logitech.
“AMD’s key potential lies in the arrival of DirectX 12, Vulkan and VR. All three of these technologies depend on low rendering latency and superior compute capabilities for the best performance. We have a special feature in our graphics hardware called asynchronous compute that serves both of these goals, and our competitors have nothing similar. The proof is there: Radeon graphics cards have convincingly won every DirectX 12 game benchmark, the Vulkan API was based on the AMD-built Mantle, and we have six excellent GPUs that are more than ready for premium VR experiences from HTC and Oculus,” said, Robert of AMD.
“The adoption of new, low overhead, close to the metal APIs validates AMDs long term strategy of delivering multithreaded performance processors in the PC market. While professional applications have long utilized multiple cores to increase throughput, the next generation of games and game creation tools are beginning to leverage the potential of multiple cores. Recent performance tests show uplifts of 50% in key new game titles on AMD FX 6 and 8 core processors – a free performance boost never before seen in the industry,” concluded, James of AMD.
Plans for gaming segment
“Our plan is quite simple, we should have proper line of the products, should have best quality in the Industry with well service support. So far we have Graphics cards, Gaming PCs and Gaming SSDs and we also have plan to role out Virtual Reality products. We are promoting our product on both media, online & offline. In online we have continuous engagement with target customers on various social platforms and also via online media promotions. In off line we have series of events line “Gamers Connect” in which we invite the gamers to test & feel the product with his most loved games, so far we have done more than 25 events in over 3 qtrs, and continuously doing it. We have channel partner training programs so that they should be aware of the trend of the industry. We have also “Fan Connect” in which we bring our fans on some trip and try to understand how they feel about our products and might become our brand volunteers. We have many more such programs to gear up the industry,” stated, Deepak of Zotac.
“We always have been a Gamer/Enthusiast Pro brand and that is part of our DNA. All our products and promises have been to better the gaming experience. The new products that we have in the pipeline seek ways to improve on the whole gaming experience. Our idea is to offer Gamers a complete ecosystem starting from case, power supplies to gaming peripherals that can take the rigours of gaming. In order to offer gamers a first-hand experience of our products we have embarked on a mission to set up CoolerMaster experience zones where they can touch and feel our products before they buy. We are also doing many events and participating with other vendors for promoting gaming in general via small Gaming meets,” said, Sanket of Cooler Master.
“We are working hard to make eSports a profession in India and we have been doing many activities to build a stronger community and platform in India. We have created many events to connect with the existing gaming community like multicity gamers meet, gaming events in schools and colleges, roadshows to increase awareness of gaming hardware available in India etc,” said, Himanshu of Acro.
“Our ROG series, which was launched last year, received great response. Enthused by such response, we further enhanced the series with our latest additions. The new models added to the ROG series are ROG G20CB and ROG GT51 which are desktops and ROG G501VW, ROG G551VW, ROG G752VY and ROG GL552VW-CN430T are notebooks. Moreover, last year we entered into a major sponsorship agreement for the Taiwan Excellence Gaming Cup 2015. As per the association, ASUS aided the tournament with 20 units of Gaming Desktops. We plan to go deeper in India where you will find gaming talent waiting to experience the new technologies. We will organize more gamer meets in Tier 2-3-4 cities this year. Also, we are looking at opening exclusive ROG stores in the country this year,” said, Peter Chang of Asus.
“Logitech has been actively involved in gaming tournaments encouraging gaming enthusiast to venture in the gaming domain for many years now. Over the last four years we have been participating and partnering with gaming tournaments known as Free2play held in Bangalore,” opined, Jangra of Logitech.
“Our plan for the gaming segment is pretty straightforward – produce the best possible GPUs for the money, offer great graphics drivers, and secure a rich portfolio of Radeon-optimized games so consumers have stable and high-performance gaming experience. On the eSports side, we recently sponsored the Fnatic team, we have our own CSGO team at AMD, and we sponsor several Twitch streamers who love to play the latest competitive games. We are continuing to explore the eSports domain and invest where it makes sense, and are thrilled to see how this community has made gaming more accessible and enjoyable for millions of new gamers,” said, Robert of AMD.
“The year 2016 for HyperX will be very aggressive for the Gaming Industry. Apart from the several promotional events which the brand extends its presence to, we are already associated with topnotch gaming brands who share a similar ideology helping us tap the right TG and streamline the gamers. Next is the Gamers meet where HyperX has already established a very strong foothold via several past associations – this shall enable us to connect to the gamers bringing them an experience with HyperX products that they shall never be aware of otherwise. Another key highlight is our connect with the tournament organizers to establish systems exclusive to the gamers to play. Our route for the year shall be via the engagements at ground level to make them feel and experience HyperX like never before! These activities shall build an exciting stage to connect with the fast-mushrooming Indian gaming community,” concluded, Vishal of Kingston.
Predictions for the coming years
According to Sanket of Cooler Master,PCs are here to stay and PC gaming will go from strength to strength. All current trends indicate growth in PC gaming components and hence the future looks bright! Personally, I expect the PC gaming market to grow at least 20% YoY. VR will play a crucial role in engaging the new age gamers and mobile gaming will help connect and make people understand and appreciate gaming in general. This will drive the need to move from a small screen and graduate to a proper big screen entertainment.
“Coming years seems like coming with so many great opportunity as major brands like Nvidia, Razer, MSI, Steelseries, G.skill and many others have great plans to invest in Indian eSports community by sponsoring teams, events tournaments etc,” said, Himanshu of Acro.
“890 million and has surpassed an inflection point, with experience, QA testing and developing products combined with availability of creative talent, advanced technology and low-cost, Indian markets provide the best opportunity for collaboration and development work. With huge skill-base, across IT, testing and art, the future of gaming industry in the country looks bright in the years to come,” said, Peter Chang of Asus.
“In the coming years, we expect PC gaming to have a multifold growth with an increasing awareness and enthusiasm from our consumers. However, lack of sufficient bandwidth has been major roadblock for PC gaming and we expect that improved bandwidth will create a fertile environment for PC Gaming,” predicted, Jangra of Logitech.
“Gaming is a high potential segment for India. We have worked with some gamers here with professional national & international gaming exposure, out of which, some have turned mentors to guide the budding gamers. Brands like Rockstar North, Ubisoft, Valve and a few Indian players are introducing superb games but unless the gamers look for a hardware upgrade, they wouldn’t be able to experience these games to their full potential. For the same, we have already introduced our HyperXrange of next-gen memory modules and SSDs which have enough firepower required for the best of games,” said, Vishal of Kingston.
“We are excited about High Dynamic Range (HDR) monitors and content, because the promise to offer display accuracy and fidelity far beyond what most people have ever seen. HDR displays are absolutely breath-taking to experience in person. DX12 is quickly becoming the fastest-growing graphics API in history—that magnifies the opportunity of our unique hardware,” said, Robert of AMD.
“The era of multi-thread is here now, and will benefit AMD fans now and in the future. Games using DX12 or OpenGL Vulkan will be able to offer better experiences on the same hardware today, leaving our next generation platforms open to scaling even higher in the experiences gamer desire – more immersion, more performance and more fun,” said, James of AMD.
“We can see a huge number of mobile gamers shifting to PC gaming and demand of high-end component is continuously increasing. If things go this way, then for the next 3 years, the gaming industry will grow nearly 35-40% YOY; Virtual Reality, new game technology and new games would be key to drive the industry,” concluded, Deepak of Zotac.
Brand stands in race
“The Gaming Industry is still not very organized and operates quite in a fragmented way. Though we have been dominant in most areas, we would like to focus more on improving the gamers experience and providing a better value proposition rather than comparisons,” said, Vishal of Kingston.
“Radeon is a well-known and liked AMD brand that has a lot of history behind it, and gamers are eager to see us grow and thrive. We also have new GPUs on the way, codenamed Polaris, which will be an excellent upgrade for a whole lot of people who have been waiting for the ‘right time’ to upgrade their older GPUs. Polaris will help build new loyalty and respect for Radeon and AMD on the strength of its performance,” claimed, Robert of AMD.
“AMD is a premium gaming brand, and the only brand to compete in the console and PC gaming spaces. That heritage and industry strength allows AMD to drive great experiences forward while still delivering on the promise of performance per price in key metrics that PC gamers expect. The current revitalization of PC gaming around multi-core processors, low level APIs, and innovative new display technology will drive the AMD brand to new heights with our next generation AMD desktop platform,” added, James of AMD.
“We are the component player in gaming industry and specially PC gaming industry component is the key to drive it. In India, we can say that ZOTAC is synonyms of graphics card. We have huge fan-following and they really like the way ZOTAC present itself in gaming industry. ZOTAC is looking more towards gaming products and I can predict that ZOTAC would be a very renowned name in Gaming Components,” said, Deepak of Zotac.
“Right from the inception as a Brand, we have been at the forefront of gaming and we will stay there. Not only Gamers, but even common people like you and me would be able to use our technology to make PC systems that do multitude of things and that’s our goal for future. Bring masses the enjoyment of gaming and PC building. Make it easy for them to choose, build and configure the systems the way they like and hence the tag line Make It Yours ”said Sanket of Cooler Master.
“We are the pioneers of creating a platform for gamers where they have freedom to choose what they want, unlike offline system integrators our website offers a wide range of products to choose from at a very competitive pricing and best after-sales-support. With an experience of more 20 years, we know what a gamer requires and to make things better we have a team of inhouse expert gamers and engineers who help fellow gamers to fulfill their requirements. Our initial experience with our customers is quite awesome as they liked our services and products and rated us the best system integrators they have come across. We are further adding more information on our portal to help gamers and gaming community,” said, Himanshu of Acro.
“ROG is the No. 1 gaming laptop brand worldwide. For 8 straight years, ASUS has been the world champion for gaming laptops. Ruling over 34% market share as per January 2015 data according to GFK, ASUS is unbeatable in the GTX market share. The numbers are growing and it proves that ASUS ROG is one of the major brands in gaming industry. With such innovation and a constant eye on the market, we aim to be the top in India as well,” said, Peter Chang of Asus.
“The IT/PC gaming industry has always been a competitive market for brands to operate in with fierce competition from other brands and manufactures. The modern day consumer is savvier than before with accessible means to compare products, prices before making a purchase decision, leading to a decrease in customer loyalty. BIOSTAR is aware of this competitive and tense market globally; therefore BIOSTAR is focusing more on product development and marketing. BIOSTAR is confident to say that with our competitive and affordable prices, we offer products of excellent quality and owned product features that doesn’t break the bank, so we’re able to differentiate BIOSTAR from other brands, especially with the abilities of innovation and design,” said,….of Biostar.
“Logitech is one of the most preferred PC gaming accessory brand globally. It is the brand which has presented first gaming mouse to the world,” concluded, Jangra of Logitech.
Finally
India will be a host to one of the largest gaming markets in a couple of years. The gaming market revenue is largely limited by the disposable income and the propensity to pay, while the large potential is on the other side of the coin. Challenge lies in the opportunity, and vice versa. The one who can cater to the cost-effective market but with quality product will finally make a fortune. The ecosystem is still in the evolving stage; hence there lies a huge opportunity.
Highlights
Mr. Robert Hallock,Head of Global Technical Marketing, AMD
“AMD’s key potential lies in the arrival of DirectX 12, Vulkan and VR. All three of these technologies depend on
low rendering latency and superior compute capabilities for the best performance. We have a special feature in our graphics hardware called asynchronous compute that serves both of these goals, and our competitor has nothing similar.”
Mr. James Prior, Product Manager – Computing and Graphics, AMD
“The era of multithread is here, and will benefit AMD fans now and in the future. Games using DX12 or OpenGL Vulkan will be able to offer better experiences on the same hardware today, leaving our next generation platforms open to scaling even higher in the experiences gamer desire – more immersion, more performance and more fun.”
Mr. Rajesh Doshi, Director, Zebronics
“Zebronics is one of the very few Indian brands which caters to this segment. This is a very challenging segment as expectation of the gamers are very high and you have to be very careful with the product quality and features it offers. Even in this niche segment of products, we are able to offer multiple products to the gamers. As our tagline says we are locked and loaded to be “Always Ahead” in PC gaming industry race.”
Mr. Vishal Parekh, Marketing Director, Kingston Technology
“The Gaming Industry is still not very organized and it operates in quite a fragmented way. Though we have been dominant in most areas, we would like to focus more on improving the gamers experience providing a better value proposition rather than comparisons.”
Mr. Pradeep Thamman, Country Manager, ViewSonic India Pvt Ltd.
“The Indian gaming market is still in developing stage, lot of opportunity is there to explore. People are ready to spend money for their desktop up gradations and gaming PCs but they don’t know how to get profit out of that. ViewSonic is doing its part to provide knowledge to these gamers by organizing events and forums, so that they can get the right direction and more out of gaming. VP series 24’ & 27’ monitors which have 4K output capabilities are the best recommended monitors for the serious gamers from ViewSonic. Also ViewSonic is coming up with many new gaming models to hit the gear market shortly.”
Mr. Deepak Gupta, Country Manager-India, Zotac
“Gaming has a huge potential, it is a growing industry across the globe. In India also once the Internet speed & cost are optimized, the trend of gaming will further increase. It will not be limited to metro cities, it is increasing very nicely in even B, C & D class cities.”
Mr. SanketNaik, Business Head, India, Bangladesh & Sri Lanka. Cooler Master
“We always have been a Gamer/Enthusiast Pro brand and that is part of our DNA. All our products and promises have been to better the gaming experience. The new products that we have in the pipeline seek ways to improve on the whole gaming experience. Our idea is to offer Gamers a complete ecosystem starting from the case, power supplies to gaming peripherals that can take the rigours of gaming.”
Mr. Himanshu Jain, Acro Engineering Company
“We are working hard to make eSports a profession in India and we have been doing so many activities to build a stronger community and platform in India. We have created many events to connect with the existing gaming community like multicity gamers meet, gaming events in schools and colleges, roadshows to increase awareness of gaming hardware available in India etc.”
Mr. Peter Chang, Regional Head – South Asia & Country Manager – System Business Group – ASUS India
“Keeping in mind the increasing passion and trend of gaming among individuals, for 2016 gaming will be one of our key focus areas and providing gaming hardware to all the enthusiasts, right from entry level to professional gamers will be our target.”
Mr. Ashok Jangra, Cluster Category Manager, India and South West Asia, Logitech
“In the coming years, we expect PC gaming to have a multi-fold growth with an increasing awareness and enthusiasm from our consumers. However, lack of sufficient bandwidth has been major roadblock for PC gaming and we expect that improved bandwidth will create a fertile environment for PC gaming.”
Mr Jessy Chan- Sales Director, Biostar India
“We foresee that the PC gaming industry will continue to be a fiercely competitive market, with different brands consistently improving and pushing for different aspects of their products. Coupled with more technologically savvy consumers of today, we see that the gaming industry will continue to reach new heights as they fight to stay relevant with products to enhance the gaming experience.”