FOCUS: Half of Russian Internet users play online games, market soars

By Yekaterina Yezhova

MOSCOW, Mar 28 (PRIME) -- Every second Russian Internet user plays online games, and the industry enjoys constant growth. The number of gamers rises along with the expansion of smartphones and the mobile Internet, analysts said. Despite the turbulent economic climate, domestic developers of online games succeed in their branching out into foreign markets.

“On the international scale, the games market is the biggest segment of digital content, which annually generates multi-billion incomes and attracts a huge audience. In Russia, the games market was the most significant and promising digital content direction in 2014–2015,” J’son and Partners Consulting said in a research.

The domestic games market is expected to add 16% by the end of 2016 to U.S. $1.89 billion from the end of 2014, almost in sync by growth rates with the world one, which is seen to gain 17% to $95.2 billion, the research company said.

“The market exceeded 50 billion rubles as of the end of 2014. The market was unavoidably hit by exchange rate fluctuations in 2015, but the upside is that such a situation pushed domestic developers to be more active in their efforts to enter foreign markets,” Oleg Shpilchevsky, head of the games division at Internet company Mail.Ru Group, told Russian Connection.

J’son and Partners Consulting breaks the games market into massively multiplayer online (MMO) games; mobile games; games for personal computers; games on consoles; and browser/social games.

Below is a breakdown of the domestic online games market as of the end of 2014, as estimated by Mail.Ru Group:

Type of game	Volume, bln rbl	Year-to-year growth, %
MMO	28.0	24
Social	14.0	4
Mobile	8.8	68
Online (total)	50.8	24

Mobile games is the most quickly rising segment thanks to the smartphone and tablet fever, evolution of devices’ functions and spread of 3G and 4G networks, as J’son and Partners Consulting said.

The mobile games market amounted to $308 million in 2015, accounting for 70% of the market of mobile applications. The number of mobile games users amounted to 27.7 million, according to Google statistics.

“The market structure won’t change in 2016: MMO games will keep leadership, but developers will create games for various platforms so that the user could play anytime anywhere,” Shpilchevsky said.

“Today almost every second user of the Runet is a gamer. According to our research, the audience of gamers in Russia exceeds 43 million people. Their number constantly rises.”

According to GfK, the number of Russians of over 16, who surf the Web rose 5% in 2015 to 84 million. Internet penetration climbed to 70.4% in 2015 from 67.5% a year earlier. The country’s population is about 144 million people, including 97 million aged 18–64.

Among the most widely-spread ways of monetization of online games are purchases of various games artifacts, like armory, and accelerators of processes for those who do not want to or have no time to pass a certain level, Shpilchevsky said.

According to Google, the most popular way of monetization of mobile games is “freemium,” when the game is free, but extra options are purchased. Mobile games account for 18% of total incomes from games in the country.

The leading games developers include Mail.Ru Group, Gaijin and Plarium.

“Preferences of games are not usually restricted to a single genre or a kind. We can surely name multiplayer tank games among the leaders of recent years. The number of users of our Armored Warfare game is rising. Newcomers join the audience. Mobile games see a growing number of players, including different competitive games, thanks to spreading smartphone penetration,” Shpilchevsky said.

According to Google, penetration of the mobile Internet in Russia climbed 6 percentage points in 2015 to 64%, and the number of unique users amounted to 52 million people.

“The launch of our Armored Warfare on the European market last year showed that Russian projects can be popular abroad: we receive 65% of income from our foreign clients. Among countries-leaders in the online games industry are the U.S., China and Japan”, Shpilchevsky said.

(68.4346 rubles – U.S. $1)

End