It seems massively multiplayer gaming is finally coming of age in India. I have been playing one for the last 2+ yrs namely World of Warcraft and secretly hoping that someday blizzard will launch india servers. I was just browsing through some stuff and saw that sify relaunched a korean game A3 in india sometime back and as of yesterday you can download the client via games on demand service on indiagames.com.
The game is subpar at best from what I could see. But what is interesting is the business model MMORPG's are taking in india. Compared to the US and Europe where most people are charging monthly subscriptions for the game, Chinese prefer to pay as and when they play. Eg prepaid gamer cards which are sold for certain number of hours of play. Thats the model in which WOW is working in China. You go buy a gamer card, register an a/c and play for as long as the card lasts. Most of Wow gamers in China play from gaming cafes. It seems most people entering the Indian market are also looking at a gamer card model instead of a pure subscription model.
The next 2-3 yrs look to be really interesting with gaming taking off in a big way in India. Especially with some serious money being pumped into it namely XBOX360 launch, UTV buying stake in indiagames, reliance launching its gaming portal Zapak.com with Zapak tv and gaming events being organized through the country. SKOAR 2007 just happened in Delhi from Jan24-Jan26th organized by the Jasubhai digital media group publishers of SKOAR the gaming magazine in India.
Also reliance seems to be pushing zapak.com a lot they are planning on launching Zapak gamer Cafe's as well as launching some MMORPG's in india.
In short, we have some very very exciting times ahead:)) One thing to look forward to would be the launch of XBox live service in india.
