Its tennis game for Java-enabled mobile phones, Pat Cash Pro Tennis (named after the former Australian tennis player), was the game of the week on the Vodafone WAP portal in the UK last week. It was also rated highly by Wireless Gaming Review.
In January this year, Dhruva Interactive became the first game developer in the world to get a franchise to develop games based on Charlie Chaplin. That's not all. Microsoft Game Studios picked Dhruva out of nine contenders worldwide after six months of evaluating its abilities to provide game production services for a major game title that's slated to be released soon.
Paradox Studios, also in Mumbai, has already developed 55 games for wireless devices. Most of these games are available on the Reliance Infocomm network. Dhruva Interactive, Indiagames and Paradox Studios are but three Indian companies that have forayed in recent times into a business that could see explosive growth. Three years ago, no Indian wireless game developers existed.
Today, at least five, perhaps more, who are doing significant work exist. Byte by byte, Indian wireless game developers also seem to be making their mark in a global entertainment arena that's worth Rs 5,000 crore and whose value will touch Rs 10,000 crore by 2006, according to World Wireless Forum data.
Prompting the push into mobile game development is the ubiquitousness of mobile telephones. The low level of computer penetration in India (10 out of every 1,000 people use a personal computer) meant that PC-based games always catered to a small market. But India now has some 17 million mobile phone service subscribers.
By 2006, the number of subscribers is expected to soar almost six times to 100 million. The explosive growth of mobile phones (one out of every 75 Indians owns a mobile phone today), especially in the hinterland, has given villages and small towns access to electronic games.
Notes Kunal Ramteke, marketing controller at BPL Mobile: "We cannot ignore voice which gives us 90 per cent of our revenue. But the initial trends in mobile applications are quite healthy. We see no reason why we should not go more deeply into this."
Mobile service companies report a satisfying response to the games they offer. Reliance Infocomm today clocks daily game downloads in excess of 300,000, essentially because it is free.
Global system for mobile (GSM) service companies that offer general packet radio switching (GPRS) services (through Java-enabled phones, essential for wireless game downloads) are clocking over 5,000 downloads a day at Rs 50 per download.
Says Rajesh Rao, chief executive officer of Dhruva Interactive: "The growth of mobile telephony is spearheading an entertainment revolution for the masses." In other words, mobile phone companies are creating a mass market of people who are interested in or are getting hooked on electronic games because they are so accessible.
Going by the international experience, it makes eminent sense for mobile phone service companies to push gaming. Verizon Wireless and Sprint, the two US mobile majors, are set to earn about $1 billion this year from downloads of games, ring tones, instant messaging and wireless broadband.
The ARC Group, the London-based consultancy, forecasts that the value of the global market for mobile entertainment services "� which includes games "� will reach $27 billion and that it will have 2.5 billion users by 2008.
Globally, the gaming industry grew exponentially last year after Java-enabled handsets were launched in the mass market. Sales of Java-enabled handsets tripled in 2003 to 95.5 million from 32 million in 2002. Sales of devices embedded with Qualcomm's Brew platform reached 11.6 million in 2003 from 3.5 million in 2002.
At home, mobile phone service providers who offer gaming are doing quite nicely, thank you, with Reliance Infocomm leading the pack.
Says Salil Bhargava, chief marketing officer at Paradox Studios: "When we started offering games on Reliance India Mobile, we expected at best 15,000-20,000 downloads. But the response has been ridiculously high." Cellphone service companies reckon that their income from mobile game downloads will top Rs 15-20 crore this year.
Game developers like Gondal say that success in wireless applications should lead other software companies to get into mobile applications.
He argues that companies in India can compete with Microsoft by building PowerPoint or spreadsheet mobile applications. "This is because in such cases the delivery is not controlled by Microsoft, but by the end user," says Gondal.
He sees Indian software firms taking this route as mobile applications become the next big opportunity.
Nonetheless, both game developers and mobile service companies face a host of challenges. In the game development business, trained personnel are scarce.
"This is the biggest constraint," says Rao. "You cannot create pedigree by just offering a good salary. It's a function of the time spent. In India we've not had a culture of gaming. It has taken us (Dhruva) seven years to reach pedigree. It takes time to create an A-team, a set of world class game developers." Dhruva trains its developers for 18 to 24 months before they can be described as "ready" in "a Gurukul-type" atmosphere with imported materials and international trainers.
The shortage of people, Rao felt, was so critical that at a pre-Exim policy meeting three weeks ago with Union minister of commerce Kamal Nath, he made a presentation which sought the creation of an environment conducive to nurturing game development talent.
"We said we did not want any incentives. But the ministries (including the human resources ministry) should work to ensure that electronic gaming becomes an elective at computer engineering courses nationally. That alone will ensure that Indians create a good export opportunity," Rao argues, adding: "A pipeline of recruitables is critical if this industry is to boom in India."
A good game developer is not the average code writer. He has to have an aptitude for it, should know physics, mathematics and requires a great sense of aesthetics.
Rao points to the example of a Chennai-based software company which tried to break down game development into small parts and failed. "There is a limit to which you can break down games. A code writer will not be able to differentiate between ambient lighting and dynamic lighting in a game. There are issues of visual synchronicity too," says Rao.
There are a lot of similarities with the movie business here, points out Anurag Khurana, chief executive officer of Paradox. "The publisher (in this case the game developer) is the producer, copywriters are the screenplay artists, commercial artists are the make-up men, while geeks write code that turns the script into a seamless electronic movie "� or game, if you will."
It takes about three months to develop a wireless games versus the two years or more for developing a PC or console-based game.
Nor are all mobile phone service companies finding the going easy either. Reliance runs its network on the US-based Qualcomm Inc's code division multiple access (CDMA1X) technology, which lends itself to data applications.
But GSM service providers in India need handsets that are Java and GPRS-enabled to download games (handset owners can also visit the service company's offices and get games loaded on to their phones) "� and there are very few GPRS-enabled cellphone users in the country.
Both Reliance Infocomm and GSM service companies face other challenges. Reliance Infocomm will have to contend with drop-off rates once it starts charging for downloads.
Some global carriers have seen downloads halve once they start charging for them. The Rs 50 that GSM service companies now charge on an average for downloads is way too high. Gaming will, initially at least, remain a volumes game. That means that the price points will have to be lower.
Game developers, meanwhile, grouse that they're not being given enough of the revenue generated from downloads. Says Rao: "They need to really provide incentives for game developers. Earlier, carriers across the globe wanted to keep the maximum chunk of the revenue generated from games downloads because they thought they owned the market."
Some European carriers have already realised that offering games pays off for them too and so have starting handing over more of the revenue to the game developer.
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