AFTER the festival season, the gaming one begins. Post Diwali, Sony is planning to release Desi Adda, a game for both PlayStation Portal (PSP) and PS2 platforms. This game revolves around the home coming of a non resident Indian who discovers the beauty of many of the Indian games like kabbadi and kite flying. This game is being developed by Hyderabad-based Gameshastra, the company which is also looking at tapping the educational sector. Sony also plans to launch two more educational games. "One will be a quiz and the other will be a game for engineering and medical students to help them prepare for common entrance tests," says Atindriya Bose, Country Manager, Playstation, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe.

The company is working with several Indian studious to develop games from the conceptual stage. This is expected to improve the quality of Indian games. "When we launched Hanuman, developed by Aurona, we expected to sell around 35 million units. But it sold 50 million units. That is the potential Indian market has. The success can also be attributed to the character Hanuman who is a brand by himself," added Bose.

The company is also working with many other studios such as Immersive, Game Engine and Candela to Indianise the games. "We publish these games. So, if these games fail, its our failure. We also provide technical knowledge and game development kit," said Bose. The company has also released Singstar Bollywood, a sing along game and Mahaquiz, a game, for which the confor which the content was provided by quizmaster Derek O Brien.

Bose says the market size of the gaming industry in India is around $40 million or Rs 190 crore. This is expected to touch around $125 million in the next two years. And if the more of the gaming culture is imbibed, the size of the market could be larger. To enable this, the price of a console would have to be brought down.

Sony says a rationalisation of the duty structure would go a long way in improving the gaming culture. The company is in talks with various ministries to reduce the import and countervailing duties on consoles which are more than 25 per cent of the cost. "The 8.24 per cent countervailing duty is aimed to protect an Indian product. But today, no company in India is in the game console manufacturing business," said Bose.



The writer is a freelance journalist