Nazara to invest Rs 20cr in game development

Nazara Technologies, a Mumbai-based mobile content and application developer, will be investing Rs 20 crore in developing close to 260 games across genres and creating infrastructure for the same by the end of the 2011 calendar, according to its chief executive officer Nitish Mittersain.

Nazara currently has a catalog of around 1,000 games, about half of which are intellectual property (IP)-based. Its bouquet of mobile game offerings stands at 800 games.

“One of the key things that happened to us this year is the strategic partnership with Electronic Arts, the world’s largest gaming company, which gives us the exclusive distribution rights to their 200 3G mobile games in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. We have deals already in place with all the mobile operators and we will publish EA’s games through these channels,” Mittersain said.

Speaking to Business Standard at the recently concluded two-day Nasscom Animation and Gaming Conclave 2010, he said with the 3G rollout in India, the company would play a major role in the delivery of mobile games in the country.

“With 3G being rolled out in the domestic market, data usage on mobiles is expected go grow faster than ever. Keeping this in view, we will be releasing around 20 games a month,” he said.

Mobile gaming market is currently pegged at Rs 800 crore globally, while in India it is Rs 200 crore, which is expected to grow at 50 per cent year-on-year. Mittersain said with the success of iPhone, especially in the US market, gaming had really taken off.

“In India, there is a lot of customer interest for mobile games, given the fact that mobile gaming companies here see almost 600 downloads on a daily basis. This shows how much the demand is for mobile games. As more people are able to buy high-end phones, which support faster downloads and the gaming experience improves, demand will increase further,” he added.

Stating that the company was expecting to garner revenues of Rs 70 crore this financial year, as against Rs 40 crore last year on the back of its new 3G mobile game offerings, Mittersainsaid the users in India were still new to the gaming world, in terms of advanced games like MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role-playing game). The typical investment that goes into developing an MMORPG is Rs 10 crore.