Video game company Capcom could sell more games in India than in China within a decade, as the studio looks towards markets with long-term growth potential, COO Haruhio Tsujimoto said.
The Japanese studio said that India is a focus for its long term strategy due to its increasing population.
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“The market in India will grow exponentially in 5 to 10 years, as college students who enjoy games grow older and the economy develops,” Tsujimoto said.
Adding: “India’s population has already surpassed China’s. Taking that into consideration, we can expect to do better there than in China.”
Capcom said they are looking for local partnerships in India and Southeast Asia to help market its titles in the area.
The Resident Evil maker believes that device makers and influencers will help the company grow its digital downloads, which equate to 90% of its total sales, according to Tsujimoto.
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By GlobalDataAs it currently stands, Capcom is still an extremely small fish in India, with only just over 100,000 video games sold in the country a year.
However, the company is planning to expand its offerings of games for smartphones, which Tsujimoto says is the main device being used for internet access by young people in the country.
The COO said that Capcom has an annual sales target of more than two million companies within the decade, which could surpass its current dealings in China.
China’s video game market is still huge, though faltering
China is home to some of the largest video game companies in the world and has regularly been described as the “Games Industry Capital of the World”. In 2017, the country even overtook the US in terms of market size.
However, In February 2023, the Chinese gaming market posted a decline in sales for the first time since 2005. According to reports from China’s gaming indusrty association, the market brought in $39bn in video game sales in 2022, a 10.33% drop year-over-year.
The report followed a widespread government crackdown on video games, limiting the amount of time underage users can play and banning games on ideological grounds.
This has put pressure on China’s video game industry, with small studios to giants like Tencent looking to expand operations in the West, an area of the market which has been difficult for China to penetrate until recently. In 2022, 39 of the 100 highest grossing revenue mobile games were from China.
Despite this, the value of merger and acquisition deals in China continues to exceed India, according to GlobalData’s deal database.
In 2023 so far, the value of China's M&A deals in the video game industry totals $849m.
This is significantly higher than India, which has recorded a total of $579m so far this year.
The global gaming industry will be worth $470bn in less than a decade, increasing by more than double from $197bn in 2021, according to GlobalData.
