Why isn't Indian gaming industry progressing enough as compared to the rest of the world?

How many do you think actually buy,licenced version of games,softwa...

From your question, I could not make out whether you are referring to the gaming industry or the gaming culture. My own research on the topic has resulted in this answer. Hope it helps. Indian Gaming Industry   1. Market Size The gaming industry is still at an emergent stage in India, but it promises immense growth potential. Some of the major driving factors that is propelling this industry include a high percentage of young population, steadily rising disposable incomes, rise in wireless usage and a proliferation of game developers.  A significant rise in penetration of personal computers and mobile phones has also helped in accelerating the industry. The global gaming industry is constantly evolving with the introduction of new technologies in the gaming circuit and this has had a domino effect in India.   The Indian gaming industry touched USD 171.66 million in 2010, from USD 144.56 million in 2009. According to Anand Khemani, an indian entrepreneur in gaming industry, these are wonderful times for the Rs 600-crore gaming industry in India. He claims  that the industry is growing at a healthy 30 per cent but has the potential to grow 200 per cent!  Growth projections look even better, with the gaming market in India pegged to reach Rs 4,000 crore by the end of 2017, he says. 2. Market Segmentation The gaming industry in India can be categorized into three segments - mobile gaming, console gaming and PC & online gaming. Out of the three segments, console gaming contributed the major share of the total gaming revenues in 2009, followed by mobile gaming and PC & online gaming. In 2009, console gaming secured a market share of 62 percent, while mobile gaming garnered 23 percent. It is estimated that by 2014, the market share of console gaming would drop significantly to 36 percent, whereas the mobile gaming segment would acquire a market share of 45 percent. This substantial rise in the market share of mobile gaming would arise from an expansion in mobile penetration and an upsurge in use of smart phones; smart phone are classically designed to support technologically advanced games. The PC & online gaming segment reported a market share of 15 percent in 2009, which is expected to increase to 19 percent by 2014 - a meager 4 percent rise in five years. 3. Challenges Skewed Revenue Sharing Agreement between Game Developers and Telecom Operators: Telecom operators in India have the billing right with subscribers and usually acquire a revenue share in the range of 60–70 percent. Thus, gaming companies end up with a revenue share of around only 25–30 percent. As compared to the Indian markets, content companies in the developed countries secure a revenue share of around 60 percent. This is negatively impacting the development of the gaming industry in India and could inhibit its growth process. Lack of Localized Content: The console gaming segment mainly uses content developed overseas. There is a lack of localized content based on Indian culture and contexts. Console gaming with a localized content could go a long away in developing the gaming industry in India. Regulatory Hurdles: The presence of high import duty coupled with indirect taxes has made the prices of console games dearer by 40 percent, as compared to the prices prevailing in the grey market. In fact, the presence of the grey market is a major cause for concern as authorized game retailing chains are being badly affected by it. Price sensitivity: High-end pc games require installation of advanced graphic card and this escalates the price of a pc by up to USD 710. Thus, pc gaming is still considered an elitist form of entertainment. Lack of Skilled Manpower: The development of the gaming industry is constrained by the lack of skilled manpower. The demand for skilled manpower is expected to grow in tandem with the growth of the gaming industry. Infrastructural developmental initiatives, in order to avoid the problem of the availability of trained manpower, is the need of the hour Tax Dilemma: The gaming segment is highly prone to Internet piracy. From the retail perspective, the implementation of GST (Goods & Services Tax) is crucial as entrepreneurs would not have to worry about different formalities in each state to open a store. 4. Future Gaming in India is a new segment and so is e-commerce, which has given gaming industry a huge boost. In fact, e-commerce has helped take hardcore games distribution to more than 220 cities. This, in turn, is helping the brick-and-mortar format of game retail to flourish, since they now have a ready base of customers who are exposed to gaming. The gaming segment in India is experiencing a radical shift from the use of pcs to mobiles. The success of consoles such as XBOX 360 and announcement of new-generation consoles (PS4 and Xbox One) has given the necessary impetus to the Indian gaming industry, which was passing through a lull. With the increase in the penetration of value-added services, a further shift from pc gaming to mobile gaming is anticipated. The key players in the gaming market are focusing on expanding the total consumer base of the industry with offerings that may even reach out to a new customer base. Sources http://www.gyananalytics.com/Indian%20Gaming%20Industry%202012.pdf http://www.moneycontrol.com/smementor/mentorade/starting-up/-gaming-industry-beckons-indian-entrepreneurs-912268.html http://www.ciol.com/ciol/news/194345/indian-animation-gaming-industry-growing-cagr-22-pc/page/2

Thanks to Chirag. To extend his answer to your question, being a budding game designer, I personally feel if there are no game designers from India, there won't obviously be quality products coming out. Referring to the Indian Information Techonology's success, the quality of software development India has reached in the world is commendable, there are Indian startups bought by Google. For gaming, all a startup needs is good quality of animators, creative team of game designers, ux and ui designers, psychologists and obviously intelligent people with coding and logic. Quite frankly, if the driving factor/connector of all these fields - the game designer, is not a product of India, becomes a bad recipe for IndianGamingIndustry. Thereby people like us look outside to work. Secondly, games are products that have a very very short product life cycle, as compared to physical products or services. Thirdly, an application of gaming, Gamification, is also being adopted by some MNCs and BPOs to manage and get their job done by their employee, to make them more dedicated to work, and increase their efficiency, sort of giving employees pseudo reasons to work for better. But even that category is very minute. Lastly, there is indeed a deep research required on the quality of 'games' that Indian crowd desire+want+need. US or any other international gaming model can't work here, being an Indian and a consumer of products that are inspired solely by western+chinese market, I think we all can agree on that.

Being a part of the Indian Gaming Industry, I have noticed a few things that have been holding it back it from growing at 100-200% when it has the potential to do so. 1) Low Per Capita Income- Gaming is still a luxury in India, it is just not affordable whether you buy a console or a PC. PC games are cheaper but the hardware is expensive whereas the Consoles are comparatively cheaper but the games are expensive. 2) Cultural Barriers- People still consider gaming as an unproductive way to spend your time. Parents don't want their children to be influenced by games. 3) Gaming as a Profession- In the 80s & 90s very few people entered the gaming industry as artists, developers, coders, tester or just professional gamers in India. Gaming Industry was not considered as an industry where one could have a career. There has been drastic changes in the attitude in the past decade which is helping this industry to grow and with the huge number of young indian population making a mark in game development, coding and IT industry,this industry has huge potential in the future. 4) Lack of game development companies in India- Wouldn't you like if GTA was developed in India and the game surroundings were from a location in India, every Indian gamer would like to play that game. Such games would give a huge boost to gaming in India. I believe that these few years will be the starting point for startups in Indian gaming industry establishing themselves as the contributers to game development rather than just being a channel to facilitate games.

The major factor is the low market for video games in India. Market propels growth and since there is such a small market for video games in India, very few companies are taking the risk if producing and publishing Video Games.Me and my friends did a root cause analysis on the low popularity of Video games in India and came up with the following findings:http://srinivaspavan.blogspot.in/2014/02/yet-to-be-conquered-by-gaming-world.html