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Zapak’s Downloadable Games Model Failing? New Focus on Selling Discs ?
(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
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Is Zapak.com, the online gaming portal owned by the mighty Reliance ADAG group, failing in its plan? Downloadable games, that is? This report by Business Standard hints something towards this. Reportedly, Zapak’s now offering the gaming CDs to beat the lukewarm response for its online downloadable games.
Rohit Sharma, chief operating officer, Zapak Digital Entertainment said
“The downloadable business is lagging behind owing to issues like robust payment mechanisms and people’s reservation to pay online. However, online gaming segment continues to be the focus of the company.”
Well, people’s reservation to pay online will always be there. Specially for stuff that they can source through other channels for free. Advertising always looked a viable option. It made sense to advertise Zapak.com itself, first. In India, Zapak.com had an Alexa ranking of 77. This is largely due to promotional activities taken up by Zapak. Loads of TV commercials and offline initiatives like the Zapak Gameplex. It even tried its hands at merchandising with Love Story 2050. Zapak marched ahead of both its competitors, Games2win.com (Alexa.com India Ranking 928) and Indiagames.com (Alexa.com India ranking 1114).
However, mounting costs over heavy promotions ensured the high cost of acquisition of customer, for Zapak. In order to be profitable, it needed higher level of revenues. Its involvement in various offline initiatives can be seen as an effect of the Reliance brand. The want to be ubiquitous had fueled the expansion strategy of Zapak.com.
I see the discs release and another expansion strategy. The COO of Zapak has said himself that the downloadable business has some issues. The good thing here is that Zapak is acting like a startup, modifying its strategy quickly to keep pace with the market. At Rs.49-99, the games are placed quite competitively. Also, through its discs too, the idea is to drive more traffic to Zapak.com as the game contains a beta version of the MMOG that the company plans to launch soon.
With a targeted revenue of Rs.5 crore in the next there months, the company plans to launch 10-15 games in every two to three months and has already released 150,000 titles of 47 titles in action.
The offline + online synergy in strategies always work well. So far, even for Zapak, the offline initiatives have helped growth in the positive direction. Apart from revenues, Games CDs can be a strong branding exercise too. Imagine a kid walking in to a mall and seeing 1,000 CDs stacked infront of him, all shouting “Zapak”.
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you writing lot of bad thing things about zapak. have this blog on zapak stupid failure on blog spot writin by you. you must stop doing it right now
@Most Emailed: We have better things to do that write about zapak on blogspot. Well and zapak should be happy if anyone writes about them good or bad.