Internet gaming to grow manifold

ALKESH SHARMA / Emirates Business

As more number of individuals in the UAE hook to internet in pursuit of a leisure time, the gaming industry has emerged as a business that is bound to reap rich dividends. According to experts, internet gaming industry is all set for a robust growth in the coming years as internet gaming traffic will grow eight-fold by 2020 in the MEA (Middle East Africa) region.
According to the ‘11th annual Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI) Complete Forecast for 2015 to 2020’, the internet gaming traffic will grow eight-fold and it will be nearly two percent of the consumer internet traffic in 2020 in this region. It also added that by 2020, there will be approximately 1.5 networked devices per capita, 77 percent of which will be mobile-connected.
“Internet gaming is the next big thing happening in the IT circles of the Middle East and UAE is leading this region in this segment. Over the last couple of years, many multi-media start-ups have ventured into the field of developing internet games,” Abhijit Chaudhary, an internet game developer who is running a start-up ‘Avio Games’ in Abu Dhabi, told Emirates Business.
“Market’s appetite is very big and there is no dearth of buyers, who are sitting as far as in US and Europe. However, in the UAE, major chunk of industry is concentrated around outsourcing of the business,” he added.
According to reports, over half a billion online gamers around the world play game on their daily basis with an approximate time spent online roughly reaches three hours per day. Industry experts attribute this rise in the internet gaming to increasing penetration of internet connections in the region.
Mike Weston, Vice President, Cisco Middle East, said, “One of the most significant changes of the next few years will be the dramatic increase in worldwide connectivity via the internet. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than across the Middle East and Africa where we are looking at the highest growth rate in the world with 2.4 billion new devices and connections to be added by 2020.”