Bollywood the next big thing on mobile gaming

Mumbai, Apr 22 (UNI) The world's second largest mobile market has found a new ally in the world's largest entertainment industry.

Bollywood has become big in mobile gaming sector. With more than 300 film releases in a year, Bollywood has opened up new unchartered territory for mobile gaming. Starting from Sholay' to King Khan starrer Don', mobile games based on movies are now catching the imagination of the mobile users.

According to a recent NASSCOM report, the mobile game development industry is worth 100 million dollar in India and is growing at 100 percent every year. By 2010 industry is expected to be worth 500 million dollar.

Neeraj Roy CEO of Hungama.com, a mobile gaming portal puts it as ''Indians are crazy about movies and music especially that of bollywood films. Mobile content and gaming companies are now tapping this target audience. Infact, games based on Bollywood movies also serve as a brand extension of the movie''.

Downloading each Bollywood game can cost anything from Rs 50 to Rs 150 per download, so the revenue model is gaining in popularity.

On an average, a movie sells 7,000 to 10,000 copies with more popular movies even going up to 25,000 downloads. However, how well the game would be received depends on how popular the movie is and how well the game has been made.

''It all started with 'Sholay', which made it to the top of the download charts setting a completely new record in Bollywood content download, with the game crossing the 150,000 downloads mark on GSM operators and 800,000 on CDMA phones,'' says Rajiv Hiranandani CEO of mobile2win.

On this front service providers are taking a step ahead over 1000 games are offered by Airtel as of today. The content library is refreshed every week. For instance, Airtel saw a 500 per cent increase in daily downloads in this quarter of 2007 compared to the last one.

Airtel spokeperson Abhinadan Saikia said,''Already there are games being made based on Tamil and Bengali movies. Multiplayer games are also being designed, wherein two people citing in distant places can play a game together''.

Industry experts feel that the real growth of the bollywood based games will come from smaller towns and villages, where the entertainment avenues are very less and people are very fond of movies or any other event related to films.

''Yet Bollywood remains an unpredictable business and not many Bollywood films can be used for games as most of them are based on love stories. We have to be very selective about movies and the kind of games we develop'' said Vishal Gondal, CEO of Indigames.com .

There are also instances where the films have not done well in box office but games based on them have worked well.

The statistics speaks volumes for the gaming industry. The mobile gaming might not have reached the level of penetration necessary to label it a mass phenomenon, but its just a few yards away from a striking distance. And now Bollywood-based mobile games could be the killer app that all were waiting for.

UNI