Niko Partners: Indian Games Market Includes Almost 40 Crore Players, Mobile Gaming Dominates With 98.8% Share and More

Niko Partners is a market research and consulting firm that covers video games, esports, and streaming in Asia and the Middle East. The firm recently released an infographic that provides data on the Indian Games Market in 2022, which includes “Niko’s proprietary market model and 5-year forecast through 2026, and qualitative and quantitative analysis on gamer demand, behavior and usage for mobile and PC games”.

Through their report, Niko Partners has stated that in 2022 there were 396.4 million gamers in India. They also projected that players on PC and mobile spent a whopping $704.5 million. According to their analysis, there will be more than 630 million players in 2026, who will generate $1.4 billion in revenue. This analysis does not include revenue that was generated by Real Money Gaming.

Fastest Growing Market for Games

India has also been labelled as the ‘fastest growing market in Asia-10’. This is done on the basis of revenue and the number of gamers. The country has also been dubbed as the second largest games market in the world behind China.

Majority of players comes from Mobile Gaming

India is primarily a mobile gaming market, with 98.8% of players in the country playing on the smaller platform. The mobile gaming market also accounts for 85% of total market revenue, which means that vast majority of players in India like to play and spend on mobile gaming.

Moreover, an average of 14.1 hours per week is spent on gaming on mobile. India also has the highest proportion of mobile gamers across Asia-10 region, with players spending over 5 hours per week on gaming. The tendency to pay has also increased with higher number of spenders in the country.

2023 will not be as big as 2022

It has also been understood that the growth rate in 2023 will be lower than 2022, as it will include the full year impact of BGMI ban. The growth rate will fall further if more mobile games are banned in 2023. Check out what Lisa Hanson, President of Niko Partners, had to say about the Indian Games Market:

“India has quickly become one of the most important markets that we track and is the fastest growing market by both revenue and gamers in the Asia-10 region. India’s nearly 400 million gamers account for over half of the 788 million gamers in Asia-10 and are a formidable force to be understood and served by developers and publishers.”