Pune, November  10, 2015: Indian Gaming is a mobile first market, with handheld gaming revenues at $150 million, finds a study conducted by The National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM). Its report titled the ‘Indian Games Market Review’  was released  last week at the NASSCOM Gaming Developer Conference 2015 in Pune.
According to the report, mobile gamers lead the market in India, with  a Smartphone install base estimated at 200 million by the end of 2015 that is estimated to grow by 100 million each year thereafter. Approximately 40 to 50 million people play games on their smartphones and feature phones, with an annual growth rate of 40% to 50%. Mobile gaming revenues are currently estimated at $150 million across all revenue models. Additionally, the console market size, is estimated to be around 3 - 4 million gamers, with 3 - 3.5 million of lifetime sales for all consoles including PlayStation 2 (2 million) and 100,000 units for PlayStation 4 and XBox One combined. The cyber cafe market is currently estimated at 3000 cafes in India with games, of which 1500 have 5 machines or more dedicated to games. It’s estimated that there are 250,000 active PC/MMO players, with popular games including Counterstrike, DOTA, League of Legends and World of Tanks.
On the content creation side, the report outlines a young industry that has changed dramatically in the last five years and now includes over 200 games development studios and service providers. The advent of self-publishing, investment and crowdfunding, has led to a new breed of agile indie developers, whose focus is on mobile and PC social games. More than half of Indian Game Developers and Service Providers were established from 2012 onwards and the industry follows a lean structure, with 57% of companies having less than 10 employees and in 2014, 27% of all Indian Game Developers and Service Providers had revenues of above $1.6 million.
The report  finds  75% of Indian developers are focused on building games for the global gaming market. 96% of developers work on mobile games, with 61% of those building free-to-play games. Among studios, arcade games are the most popular genre, followed by puzzle and racing releases.