DeNA’s U.S. subsidiary ngmoco is looking to shake up the mobile market in 2013 with a hardcore shooter called The Drowning, but the company isn’t pinning its hopes on North America alone. As digital becomes more and more prominent, it’s opening the doors to markets that used to be overrun with piracy. ngmoco boss Clive Downie sees emerging markets as the next frontier.
“Brazil has 50 million smartphone subscribers already, and it had year-on-year growth of about 35 percent. That’s huge. That’s in the top five, and Russsia’s in the top five too. Exciting times. And then you get into specific content for those markets. It’s something I’m very intrigued by,” he commented.
“Right now we think about genre, but in the future we can think about country and genre. Why not go after the minutes that exist in Brazil, or Russia Mobage’s doing that very successfully; we have Mobage China, Mobage Korea. We have very different offerings to our Chinese consumers and our Korean consumers and our North American consumers and our Japanese consumers. We’re already lined up well for that.”
Downie also talked about the impact that tablets will specifically have on consoles, especially as games on tablets start to rival the visual fidelity and gameplay quality of the consoles.
“I believe their market share will be eroded due to the opportunities that tablets can provide to more consumers all over the world,” Downie said. “I do believe there will always be a console market – my sense is it will become ultracore, almost like hobbyist, in the way that certain genres of entertainment or product become hobbyist over time as people have migrated to other things.”
Source: GamesIndustry International {link no longer active}
