New Delhi: “Whether to play Freefire or PUBG? (Want to play Freefire or PUBG?)” a security guard asked his partner at a bank near the Bluestacks office. Bluestacks CEO Rosen Sharma, who overheard the conversation between two security guards, told Zee News English that he has been visiting the bank for the past 20 years, and has always seen them playing cards to beat boredom. But times have changed. India’s digital revolution, access to affordable bandwidth, affordable smartphones and high-speed internet has indeed provided the much-needed push for mobile gaming.
For those unaware, PUBG Mobile and Garena Free Fire are two of the most popular free-to-play battle royale games in India. Both have millions of users who tirelessly enjoy playing them for a long time. (Also Read: Swiggy Moonlighting Policy: Company Allows Employees To Work With Other Firms To Make More Moolahs)
Elaborating on another such incident, Sharma said that he saw two people playing Ludo King, another popular game, near Charminar in Hyderabad, which has successfully connected millions of people with their smartphones. Sharma described the rise of mobile gamers in India as a “ground development”. (Also Read: Resilience Of Microfinance Borrowers Behind MFI Industry’s Turnaround Post-COVID: Muthoot Microfin CEO)
The number of online gamers in India is growing at a really fast pace. In terms of annual revenue, the online gaming market in India grew from around $1 billion in 2020 to $1.25 billion in 2021, according to a March 21 report by EY and FICCI. The report forecasts rapid growth for the gaming segment in 2022. Too.
Rise and Rise of Real Money Action Games
Bluestacks CEO Sharma said that real money gaming is becoming really popular in India. But it didn’t happen overnight. Mobile-friendly real-money gaming platforms such as Dream11, RummyCircle, MPL, Winzo and Wild Rummy, have spent millions of dollars in advertising and marketing campaigns to lure gamers into the addiction of winning cash in high-risk games.
With 80 million people paying gamers in 2020, according to Lumikai and Redseer’s ‘India Gaming Report 2021’, real money games still accounted for most of the market’s revenue.
The report estimates that in-app spend in casual and hyper-casual gaming is expected to grow at a rate of 30-40 percent over the next five years due to the increase in paying customers. Well, especially with the way battlegrounds like PUBG Mobile India and Garena Free Fire are gaining traction.
Impressed by the growing popularity of online gaming in India and the growing purchasing power of Indians, Sharma expects India to become one of the top five gaming countries in the world in the coming years.
Ready Player One: Cloud Gaming
The mobile gaming industry is changing rapidly. Gone are the days when you had to make room for large games, delete non-critical apps, photos and other files.
Gamers are now simply tuning in to cloud gaming to play games that run on sophisticated machines anywhere in the world. Affordable internet means they don’t have to make noise two-three times about the data being low.
“Mobile is going to be the cloud,” says Sharma, explaining to most gamers that switching to cloud gaming saves downloading time and data. He said it’s a simple plug-and-play for gamers who don’t really understand the technology behind it.
Globally, there are so many options to choose from. For example, Google and Amazon have their own cloud gaming apps. However, most services are limited to large screens – not accessible by the public in India.
It appears that BlueStacks has a solution to this problem in BlueStacks X, an online cloud gaming platform that lets gamers play games on any web browser, such as Google Chrome and Firefox, and any device, such as an Android phone, on Windows or PC. “BlueStacks is focused on cloud gaming as mobile gaming is taking place in a big way,” Sharma said.