Reliance BigTV And Indiagames Tie Up For DTH Gaming, Is Zapak Dead Already?
Reliance BigTV, DTH arm of Reliance Communications have inked a strategic agreement with UTV’s Indiagames, to provide DTH gaming to their consumers. As a part of this agreement, Indiagames, in strategic partnership with their US-based Ally Oberon Media, will provide the popular games series currently available on PC, Web, and other gaming platforms to the DTH subscribers. Oberon Media is a world-leading multi-platform casual games solution provider delivering global, integrated casual games solutions across online, mobile and interactive television.
The gaming zone will be a move towards monitizing their VAS offerings. Currently, the company’s VAS offerings are limited to its PPV bouquet and an array of free-of-cost interactive features like iCooking, iAstro, iStock, iCricket, iNews. Branded as iGames, Reliance BIG TV and Indiagames will offer the games including leading titles from I-play, Oberon’s publishing division: Galapago, Solitaire (with 4 different versions including Classic, FreeCell, Pyramid and Towers), MOODiES, Space MOODiES, Air Hockey, and Darts, as well as premium 3rd party licenses.Indiagames is also planning to introduce local content including its top selling T20 cricket games and Bollywood games like Chance Pe Dance, Kaminey and Jodhaa Akbar amongst others.
Reliance thinks of VAS has a primary driving force in recent future. Reliance plans to double to current 5% VAS contribution within this year, with iGames predicted contributing only 10% of the total VAS usage. This according to company will contribute over Rs. 1 billion over next 5 years.
I would term it as a decent revenue for the period on something like VAS. But, the main concern I see is why to go for Indiagames when Reliance has an in-home gaming arm ZAPAK, which has a huge following as well as a great array of PC and web based games. Is Reliance not confident of its own capabilities? Reliance which believes in backward integration and has ever since its inception, expanded in backward direction, so as to process crude to final polyster, seems to be shifting from their history. Ideally, I would have expected Zapak to create VAS gaming applications for BigTV, but the move to share revenue with Zapak’s main competitors in India may actually hamper Reliance indirectly. I may be completely wrong in my analysis, but its very hard for me to find any other logical reasoning to accept this deal. Is Zapak been written off internally by Big Guys?
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Yash – your assumptions in above article goes to show your lack of knowledge about the industry. It lacks research and highlights personal bias maybe. With little bit of research you would have known that Zapak today is a huge gaming player and is growing at exceedingly high rate. Zapak.com has huge following with over 15mn visits per month making it among top 5 verticals in India and no other gaming portal even has 1mn vists. It operates India’s no.1 MMOG with peak concurrency exceeding five times the number of all other MMOGs put together in India. Zapak has largest share in Games CD retail with over 20% market share. Its gaming cafe chain Zapak gameplex has over 100 centers across India.
Coming specifically to this alliances, Zapak believes in developing the overall gaming market & culture in India and we encourage and feel happy to see other gaming companies doing new stuff in India. We had the opportunity to enter DTH games but our plans were little different than what Indiagames in doing with Big TV. Indiagames is just porting Oberon games to Big TV as they had ready content. We are doing far more exclusive work with Big TV which has not been done by any DTH operators. It will be unvieled in due course. We believe in open market scenario and do not want to create any monopolistic culture in a small gaming market like India. It was really easy for us to do the similar stuff as Indiagames but we had other plans in DTH arena with higher priorties. We really wish that Indiagames and Big TV alliance goes a big way as that will help everyone involved including us. You can write to me and I can give you more info on what Zapak is doing so that you dont pass such comments on us.
Zapak is a pioneer on the Indian Gaming scene.
Reliance ADAG( holding company of Big TV, Zapak) has taken a decision to partner with indiagames for content owned by Oberon games. I don’t see how one can draw a parallel that Zapak has been downplayed ?
If you look at it from a business point of view you wouldn’t be able to support your post title. But a nice title to garner some views, Wat blog is the like a gossip blog for the Indian digital industry unlike blogs which have meaningful content on them.
@Rajesh & @ Deepak – As pointed out by Yash he admits that he could be wrong in his analysis but its still interesting to see BIG folks going beyond their home grown Zapak and choosing a competitor to tie up. Its a first for the BIG group as earlier they have never tied up with a competitor. So its obvious to raise eyebrows and concerns.
Dear Rajeev,
BIG pictures have tied up with hungama for movie promotion. Were eyebrows raised that time ?
Hungama is clear leader in the mobile entertainment space while zapak after the amount of money its invested could least expect some help from a sister concern in Big rather than seeing their competitor get exposure on DTH platform.
Rajiv – help? You seriously dont have any idea on how corporates work