Mobile Gaming Under Price Pressure

VAS revenues from games falling, as per this article in Business Standard. Prices of games may be halved from Rs.50 to Rs.25, options such as pay-per-play, pay-per-level, game combo offers, satchet games and others are being considered. Branded games are another option, and Salil Bhargava, CEO of Jump Games says that free games (not surprisingly) receive over 100 percent more downloads than paid ones. One reason could be that they’re trying to grow the pie, the other is that users are finally getting fed up of the poor quality of content available. As Salim Mobani, COO of Hungama Mobile says – “Overall gaming is under price pressure”.

I think the real pressure for gaming companies will come when users discover that there are a fair amount of free mobile games available online, and via GPRS. As it is, the price-quality mismatch encourages piracy. The operator, as has been documented often enough, takes away a large slice of the revenue – but what of the game creator/aggregator? With reduction in prices, won’t their margins also be squeezed? Add to that woes of billing leakages, and one wonders if game creators will have to survive on VC money alone…

Related:
@3GSM: Casual Games, Payment Models, Billing Leakages And Embedded Games
@Momo Delhi: Superman Is Wireless, Those Who Pay For Games Are Ignorant

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