The power panel on Mobile Gaming at NASSCOM Animation India 06 was all about the magic of numbers.
The panel was as the case with most sessions at NASSCOM 06, a series of presentations. Presenters included Microsoft CSMP India Lead Ashish Thomas, Mobile 365 Country Manager Kaustuv Ghosh, Gameloft Country head Paul Hertz and Mobile 2 Win Country Head Rajiv Hiranandani.
“The way the mobile industry and handsets in the country are increasing, the sheer penetration of mobile phone will force the industry to change its business model. An increasing number of people are seeking more content and services on the mobile phone and soon there will be more demand than supply” said Microsoft’s Ashish Thomas.
“There has to be a lot of investment in R&D to find ways in which content can reach in a more user friendly and engaging manner to users on the mobile phone and the studios too need to have divisions working on that area of the business” he added.
Gameloft’s Paul Hertz drew attention to the scalability potential that India had but for the need for trained talent.”Though the investment in wireless games is not as huge as for the PC and console, there is a large talent pool required for testing, porting and QA”
“IT Infrastructure too needs to be less expensive” he said, commenting on the issues that India faced adding,”Gaming needs to be positioned as a serious business. People working in this field have to be shown the growth prospects and be motivated letting them to pick up other skills within the same field”
“India needs to be a market in itself, not just an outsourcing or development centre” he concluded.
Even as the Indian animation industry is establishing its positioning as a destination for high quality animation outsourcing for Long form content, Theatrical and Direct to DVD, the speakers at the Mobile Gaming session seeked to draw the audience attention towards the way the increasing penetration of the mobile in the Indian populace would create a huge demand supply gap for content, a good part of which uses animation.