Iran’s Computer and Video Games Foundation recently signed an agreement with France’s Game Connection.
Game Connection is the international event where over 2,700 developers, publishers, distributors and service providers come to find new partners and/or clients.
The Game Connection Meeting Application enables attendees and exhibitors to organize meetings in advance of the event by optimizing their time on-site.
The recent deal promises to make Iran the regional representative of the business convention and calls for hosting future events nationwide.
Game Connection is also an international marketplace for game developers, service providers and publishers looking to expand their network and find the right business partners.
In an interview with Mehr News Agency, Hassan Karimi Qoddousi, the head of the foundation, said Games Connection is considering Iran as its regional representative and the final decision will be made after Tehran’s Games Convention.
Qoddousi said TGC will be held in collaboration with Game Connection in April 2017. He added that the event is expected to attract at least 30 international companies active in the sector.
According to the official, the event will cover the fields of game developing, programming, art, project management and business models.
Earlier in September, Qoddousi signed an agreement with Pierre Carde, the CEO of Game Connection, according to which the Lyon-based business is to assist Iran in boosting its gaming sector by attracting foreign investment and partnering with Iranian firms.
With 29% of the population spending 79 minutes a day on videogames, Iran is seen to have a strong gaming community with some 23 million gamers currently playing different online games.
According to Iran’s Digital Games Research Center, the authority in charge of gaming in the country, the country’s gaming sector is worth 4.6 trillion rials ($127.7 million).
But it is difficult to accurately estimate the value of games because of the involvement of gray markets due to decades of sanctions and the absence of official distribution channels.
Gameguise, a computer game localization firm, ran a triple-A gamer study earlier in January 2016 to shed light on this market.
Between the 25th and 28th of this month, 743 respondents completed the survey on Line messenger app, which ranks third in the country. All of them owned a game console, while 70% of the sample, or 1,875 respondents, did not.
Over 80% of those surveyed used a VPN because the survey platform, Survey Gizmo, is blocked by some ISPs.
Iran’s most loved console is the Xbox 360 (42%) and the PS4 (31%) has more than twice the market share as Xbox One (14%).
Xbox 360 and PS3 will likely continue to thrive in the country for at least a few more years since the market supply consists mostly of super-cheap “localized” copies.
Some 62% of gamers purchase their consoles and games, original or copy, from outlets in Iran. A wide variety of these outlets are also active in Iranian tech bazaars, most of which owe their existence to the absence of official distributors barred from entering for decades.
Online purchase, however, is rapidly growing in popularity, with 27% opting for it.