March 27, 2008
Hyderabad

Cricket Party makes fast strides, reaches 2 million registered users while in beta version. Celebrates in the presence of several ICL cricket stars and telugu film stars.

Online games usage forecasted to be 35 billion hours a year by 2008

CRICKET is a passion and national obsession in India. Ever since India won the Cricket World Cup and subsequent tournaments, the sport has become a craze with Indians. Be it childen or teens, adults or old, male or female, cricket is the common codeword for brotherhood.

To give further fillip to the sport is Agneya, a Hyderabad based Socio-Gaming Company. It has conceptualised and developed the world's first cricket Massively Multiplayer Online Game(MMOG) combining social networking with gaming. The MMOG platform is a instant hit as it has a minimum of 1500 teams playing the game at any given period of time. It has one lakh greens to host the teams. And regstered a record of 2 million registered users achieved in just 5 months while beta verson, informed Mr. Tagore Guttinkonda, Chairman, Agneya informed today.

www.cricketparty.com celebrated its reaching 2 million registrations with a part at Touch, Hyderabad which was attended by several ICL cricket stars, telugu film stars and cricket fans who appreciated the idea of addind technology to cricket and making it more popular and congratulated Mr Tagore.

I was fascinated to see little cricket-matches being played out in the streets across India. Street corners or long plains, beaches, small mohallas in urban cities like Hyderabad, every possible place is converted into a cricket pitch and the game is played. With rapid urbanisation, vanishing playgrounds, cricket lovers hardly find a place to play their favourite sport. Further the generation next is ease at both studies and technologies and already computer savvy. In this light of background cricketparty.com is conceived, informed Mr. Tagore, who himself is a avid cricket buff.

Speaking about the market and prospects for the game, Mr. Tagore said Cricket is a very popular game and is played in more than 14 countriesin the world. A huge audience is familiar with cricket. In India 54% are below the age of 25 years who are our potential customers. The 350 million Indian middle class is also fast growing. Cricket synergises with Indian entertainment and speending. The changing midset towards entertainment and spending will also add to our advantage, maintained Mr. Tagore.

We plan to host more than 100,000 concurrent players on our website by the end of second year of operation.

One line gaming industry is very promising. By 2006 it is forecasted revenue from online games will grow to $5.2 billion with continued steady growth so that worldwide online game revenue reaches $9.8 billion by 2009. By 2008, according to an International Data Corp. study, the number of online gamers will grow to around 6.3 million. The casual and moderate gamers are expected to increase from 65% of usage in 2003 to 73% of online game usage by 2009. About 62% of online game revenue in 2009 is forecasted to come from casual and moderate gamers. By 2009, console online games are forecasted to account for only 17% of usage, but 30% of online game revenue.

According to DFC intelligence online game usage will grow significantly. According to its 'Most Likely" scenario, online game revenue will grow to $ 5 billion by 2008. Under this scenario, the bulk of revenue will come from consumer subscriptions and other "play-to-play" services. Scenarios for the growth of advertising revenue are rather unlikely to occur.

Strong growth is forecased in online game usage, with the number of worldwide online games increasing from 73 million in 2002 to 198 million by 2008, informed Mr. Tagor. Adding further he stated that by 2008 the forecast usage of online games will be 35 billion hours a year. Casual gamers will account for only 27% of usage, despite the forecast that 62% of online gamers will fall into that category, he said.

We have many companies who proved successful. Market leaders like EA.com and Sony Online Entertainment have found that despite attracting millions of users to their casual games, their main area of revenue growth has been with subscriber-based games that attract an audience of under 500,000 users.

Korean company NCsoft is the first company to make $100 million in a year on online games. They did this with just one product, Lineage.

Ultima Online achieved 100k subscribers in Japan and Final Fantasy XI Online had a very successful launch in North America after achieving significant success in Japan.

Dark Age of Camelot, which has had over 60,000 European subscribers is one example of significant success.

The above examples further prove our stand that we are on a winning wicket and confident of making cricketparty.com a big success, he summed up