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Growth of Mobile Gaming in South Africa

dammitdammit
in General
Gaming is the fastest growing segment of the South African media market, both in terms of revenue generated from sales of physical games and also mobile downloads. Consumer spending on games has also risen significantly and is forecast to reach 3.6 billion Rands by 2018.

If prevailing economic conditions persist, the gaming in South Africa is predicted to keep growing at a steady rate of 10% each year in the coming years, far outstripping the 4% annual growth rate for television.

All these indications point to the fact the gaming industry in South Africa is at a very promising point in its history. One gaming category in particular is leading the pack in terms of rapid growth; mobile gaming has managed to capture the biggest share of the gaming market.

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Consumer spending on mobile gaming was recorded at 858 million Rand in 2013 and it is expected to grow to 1.5 billion Rand by 2018 and account for over 40% of the total gaming market.

- See more at: http://africanbrains.net/2015/02/25/the-growth-of-mobile-gaming-in-south-africa/#sthash.1Q4b7hAz.dpuf
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Comments

  • LexAquilliaLexAquillia
    edited
    So this is an interesting study (here is a link to it), and an important thing to note is that they've included, for some bizarre reason, the marketing budget of a game as part of the consumer spend so the figure quoted includes all the advertising for mobile games as well.

    The other to bring into this is, from a local perspective you've got to factor in that you can only effectively monetize on the iOS app store (well and the Windows Store), but the largest store, the Play Store, is a no go area since you can't monetize unless you are doing tricksy things like incorporating off-shore or have access to a foreign bank account.
  • dammitdammit
    Eh, that's disappointing.
  • dislekciadislekcia
    Yeah, I would be very skeptical of any conclusions reached by people based solely on that PWC report. They're all going to go on and on about the potential revenue in the "games market" with no real understanding of where the actual money spent on games in SA goes. Only a very small chunk of that income actually stays in SA - the lions share of it heads directly to large game producers overseas.

    I ran some quick and dirty numbers on the retail games space to see what shops would be earning and came to something like R70M for ALL the retail outlets across SA combined. That's not a lot, not for that many stores.

    I feel like the assumptions people are making about the mobile games market are similarly blind to the issues and actual flow of capital in SA.
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  • KrummelzKrummelz
    LexAquillia said:
    The other to bring into this is, from a local perspective you've got to factor in that you can only effectively monetize on the iOS app store (well and the Windows Store), but the largest store, the Play Store, is a no go area since you can't monetize unless you are doing tricksy things like incorporating off-shore or have access to a foreign bank account.
    Could you go into a little more detail around this? What's the reason for the tricksy things to monetize on the Play Store?
    I've been playing with a mobile game prototype and haven't actually been keeping tabs on things like this.

  • LexAquilliaLexAquillia
    @Krummelz You can't open a merchant account on the play store, therefore you can't charge for the games or allow IAP. Now Google may be in the process of changing this but for now, there is no way to monetize a mobile game on the app store, unless you can open an account overseas somewhere
  • SonicaySonicay
    edited
    But me and Zaphire are using admob atm for our mobile game and it looks like its earning, but yea...no way of IAP which sucks so much :(
  • dammitdammit
    Turns out I'll be talking on the Limpopo radio station about this issue a little later today, if anyone is interested in listening (or in providing their opinions/information before 1pm today).
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  • GibboGibbo
    @dammit - Cool, hope it goes well! Which station will you be chatting with, there are quite a few in the area but I'm guessing Capricorn?
  • dammitdammit
    Yup, Capricorn.
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  • BoysanoBoysano
    LexAquillia said:
    @Krummelz You can't open a merchant account on the play store, therefore you can't charge for the games or allow IAP. Now Google may be in the process of changing this but for now, there is no way to monetize a mobile game on the app store, unless you can open an account overseas somewhere
    So I have a GAMELANCER google play account, and yes did it via a friends account and residence in UK as you will see on our developer address, now that we posted "Gloobies Lab" to the play store. Still we are busy with an update soon, and are figuring out ways to monetise. Since even though I have wallet now, I do not want to send IAP to my friends account due to tax concerns, and loss of control.. BUT I do think there are ways around monetising IAP virtually....and we may test this. Any good ideas you can give me I will also test. So my idea is to not just show ads, but to sell showing ads as IAP for virtual currency in the game. This does mean we have to have our own custom ingame shop system, but this you anycase need for IAP. So with some creative thinking there are ways around any problem, this is just one idea.

    For those whom do not understand why, Advertising companies are 3rd party to GooglePlay and have different policies and are a lot more willing to pay to South Africans. Maybe a more useful topic will be to list Ad providers whom have paid out to SA devs. I know Leadbolt says they will, and was started by an SA citizen, but so far I'm not convinced they always have good content to show. Sounds like Admob, which is very easy to integrate also does pay.

    Then of course you have to ask yourself, or look at the data, if IAP conversion rates are worth the effort than just displaying advertising sponsors more aggressively? I've read a recent article stating on 0.5% of player do IAP, and IAP model is a lot of work in game dev time for content generation. As game devs we tend to be afraid of monetising our games with ads, in a fear of offending players, but how can we afford to place content behind pay walls to compete with the F2P market?

    But yeah I'd like to discuss this topic further also..
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