India, which is already one of the fastest-growing gaming consumption markets in the world, is expected to grow further aided by the cheapest internet, the introduction of the 5G and the burgeoning young population.
According to a gadget discovery platform MySmartPrice’s latest gaming consumer survey, the Indian gaming audience is heavily focused towards mobile gaming. The study, which was based on 14,349 respondents - of which 42.7 percent of respondents were in the 19-24 years age group, identified youngsters as the key demographic of gamers in India. The report also revealed that the next big set of the gaming audience is the age group 16-18 years, while only 4.6 percent of respondents were in the 30+ age group.
The survey further reveals that the domestic audience’s focus towards mobile gaming is also leading brands to cater to the mobile gaming crowd, which leads them to offer the latest and most powerful hardware at competitive prices to become the go-to brand for gamers.
Most preferred brands for gaming
realme (with 18.5 percent share), Samsung (14.7 percent), and vivo (9.8 percent) are the top brands for gaming smartphones in the country, reveals the report. Interestingly, Apple’s share is only 5.6 percent among the preferred gaming smartphones.
The report also revealed that around 41.2 percent of respondents don’t own a gaming console and among the ones that do, nearly 22 percent play sometimes a week. Only 15.6 percent of gaming console owners claimed to play multiple times a day.
In terms of PC gamers, HP has emerged as a leader in the gaming space as 17.8 percent of respondents use HP laptops, followed by ASUS at 16 percent. According to the report, around 64 percent of respondents factor in the laptop’s gaming capabilities while purchasing.
Growth of gaming content creators
Alongside the gaming boom in the country, the report also highlights that the gaming content creator ecosystem is also expanding. Youtube (81.7 percent) is the most popular platform for gamers to fulfil their need to consume gaming content.
Around 80 percent of respondents confirmed following esports with 46.7 percent following occasionally, 33.3 percent following rigorously, while only 19.3 percent said they don’t tune in to esports.
Ajey Nagar, also known as CarryMinati, and Tecno Gamerz are the most popular gaming content creators as 51.8 percent and 42.2 percent of the respondents claim to know about these players.
Top games that Indian gamers play
Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI) and Free Fire dominate mobile platforms. Although games like Apex Legends Mobile and Call of Duty Mobile are also competing for the top spot.
Call of Duty (COD) and Need for Speed (NFS) rule laptop gaming. Apart from these, the Indian gaming community tends to enjoy games like Valorant, GTA V, Minecraft, Fortnite and CS: GO on laptops.
The survey suggests that Indian gamers tend to play games multiple times a day as 62.4 percent of respondents claimed the same. On the other hand, only 19.2 percent of respondents play games once a day and around 11 percent play games occasionally throughout the week.
Around 31 percent of respondents claimed that they play more than 30-90 minutes on their smartphone gaming, while only 10.8 percent play games for only up to 30 minutes. As per the report, over 26 percent of gamers play for 90-180 minutes and around 26 percent play more than 3 hours of games on their smartphones.
(Edited by : Vivek Dubey)
First Published: Dec 22, 2022 2:22 PM IST
