It looks like companies are trying to exploit consumers by propounding festive days to their commercial benefit so after daughters day by archies comes gamers day courtesy alliance by Zapak, Sony Ericsson and Microsoft.
Sony Ericsson, Zapak.com and Microsoft Xbox 360 have teamed up to celebrate ‘World Gaming Day’ on 12th February 2009 across the globe. This event will be celebrated annually from now on and all three will promote this first of its kind global initiative jointly across mediums from India. Celebrations in India will take place in Mumbai on February 12 and prizes worth over Rs.3 crores will be given out for different contests and activities.
Contests and activities include mall activities, championships at Zapak Gameplexes and an online contest. To participate, users need to log on to www.zapak.com and play amongst the top ten games on zapak.
The event would also see many bollywood stars joining the bandwagon and Aftab Shivdasani would be the brand ambassador for the event.
The top 10 high scorers will get a chance to play with bollywood stars.
Top 100 scorers of each game get a Zapak Gameplex Coupon which would provide free gaming hours and users will be able to download 1 free game with their playing of 1 game from top 10 category.
- World Gaming Day is expected to pull at least 10 million gamers from across the world to be part of the celebrations.
The occasion of gaming day event announcement was also marked by the launch of – Sony Ericsson F305 mobile phone with unique motion gaming technology. The phone can follow a gamer’s actions to imitate bowling or casting a fishing line.
According to zapak they already have six million online gamers within a span of just two years of launch which speaks of the seriousness at which zapak is trying to dominate and create a niche online gaming market and to achieve that it is going for tieups to encourage users just like their recent tie up with Maruti for youngdriver09.
Is india awaking to gaming revolution?
This announcement is very positive for Indian gaming industry and looking at the scale of tie up it could encourage more outsourcing of game development to Indian shores because:
- According to a pwc report the gaming industry worldwide is estimated to touch $46.5 billion by 2010 and Indian gaming industry would touch $200million which is very nascent by numbers.
Events of this scale would definitely encourage people to take gaming as full fledged entertainment and would also propel advertisers to target gamers through more spend on online gaming portals and other gaming mediums.
Aftab Shivdasani…
Definitely a step in the right direction. However, I was a bit disappointed by the requirement to play 10 games on zapak.com to register!
wow. games seem to be really picking up in india. i visited the website http://www.zapak.com/mcwgdhome.zpk and it very amazing.