Post recent budget I had written a post on how games would get cheaper in India thanks to a cut in customs duty, but looks like there was another provision in the bill where the government made it practically impossible for any Indian to pay and download games. According to this story in Business Line, Indians will need to pay an excise duty of 10% while downloading any sort of application to a mobile phone or a PC, from a foreign supplier or a website.

This makes life difficult for a lot of gamers who decide to download legitimate copies of the games from services like Steam and also for console gamers, who download games from services such as Xbox Live and PlayStation Network. According to the story in Business Line, non-payment could have sever implications:

Mr N.R. Badrinath, a partner with a consulting firm Accretive Business Consulting, told Business Line that in case of downloads made available by foreign suppliers, under the ‘reverse charge principle’ the person downloading such software in India would need to pay the service tax at 10.3 per cent. This means that even an individual downloading software for personal use would need to pay the service tax, seek registration under the service tax provisions and also file the statutory returns thereafter. Non-compliance with the provisions could trigger interest and penalty. “This amendment brought in with respect to information technology software services will create a lot of hardships,” Mr Badrinath said.

Now as this post in Medianama suggests, it is ridiculous to expect users to register just because they want to file service tax.

Under this reverse charge clause, individual users will apparently have to register for the service tax provisions and file the statutory returns for every piece of software they buy online, even for personal use. To top it off, this is applicable for every individual purchase one makes. So if you wanted to upgrade your blog’s theme and bought one, you would automatically have to go through the process of registering and filing 10.3% service tax on it!

Preethi at Medianama is right when she says that India does not care about ecommerce, for not only do gamers miss out an option to download games at a cheaper rate than it is in stores, this law will just add to the confusion which was created after govt made it mandatory for all credit card transactions online to have a special pin. Services like Xbox Live still hasn’t integrated this featured making the process of buying live points, to buy games a challenge in itself. Till now only software which were downloaded for commercial purposes were taxed but post this bud(I don’t)get, we ‘previlaged citizens’ will have to pass through more red tape and babugiri, just because we wanted instant access to a game. The government has done a big disservice to its people by coming up with such irrational measures which’ll in no way help anyone (except may be bring down the fiscal deficit; which according to me should have been handled differently). So this makes me say that the Indian government has truely eared it… not bournville.. but the hate of netizens for killing off ecommerce (and gaming) industry in India right at it’s infancy.

Implications

If government is very strict about implementing it’s laws, it needs to be seen how they’ll monitor transactions online. Paypal went through a difficult phase in India recently and finally now Indians will need to make special licenses to make transactions using the service. So in case they DO start forcing this down users throat, we’ll see a spike in piracy, but thankfully it may not affect services such as game4u and Consoul where though the purchase is made online, the products are delivered via courier. Let’s hope that services like Steam and Live don’t actually get blocked in India, knowing Indian government they are capable of doing that too.

It’s the beginning of the month, you (or your dad) just got your salary, so why wait for later? Why not decide on the games you are going to buy this month? E-xpress has sent us a list of games which they’ll be releasing in India this month. It’s not a complete list of all the games that’ll be releasing this month, but e-xpress definitely has a few good titles for you this month. Here’s the full list:

PC (Games for Windows)

Title Name      MRP      Publisher      Genre
Aliens vs Predator     699     SEGA     Action
Nepolean Total War     999     SEGA     Historic Real-Time Strategy
Sonic & Sega All Star Racing     699     SEGA     Kart Racing
Assassins Creed II     999     Ubisoft     Action Adventure
Silent Hunter 5     699     Ubisoft     Action Adventure
Supreme Commander 2     999     Square Enix     Sci-Fi Real-Time Strategy
Warhammer 40000: Dawn of War II: Chaos Rising     499     THQ     Real-Time Strategy
Metro 2033     699     THQ     Sci-Fi First-Person Shooter
Just Cause 2     699     Eidos     Modern Action Adventure

Playstation 3 (PS3)

Title Name      MRP      Publisher      Genre
Sonic & Sega All Star Racing     2499     SEGA     Kart Racing
Final Fantasy XIII     2499     Sqaure Enix     Role Playing
Yakuza 3     2499     SEGA     Modern Action Adventure
Batman Arkham Asylum GOTY     2499     Eidos     Action
Just Cause 2     2499     Eidos     Modern Action Adventure
Resonance Of Fate     2499     SEGA     Role Playing

Microsoft Xbox 360

Title Name      MRP      Publisher      Genre
Sonic & Sega All Star Racing     2499     SEGA     Kart Racing
Final Fantasy XIII     2499     Sqaure Enix     Role Playing
Metro 2033     2499     THQ     Sci-Fi First-Person Shooter
Batman Arkham Asylum GOTY     2499     Eidos     Action
Resonance of Fate     2499     SEGA     Role Playing
Just Cause 2     2499     Eidos     Modern Action Adventure

PSP

Title Name      MRP      Publisher      Genre
Shaun White Snow + POP ‘Rival Swords’  PSP Pack     1299     Ubisoft
Driver ’76 + Prince of Persia 3 Revelations PSP Pack     1299     Ubisoft

Brothers In Arms D-Day + Rainbow Six Vegas PSP Pack     1299     Ubisoft
Splinter Cell Essentials + GRAW 2 PSP Pack     1299     Ubisoft

Pranab Mukherjee’s budget today gave gamers a reason to cheer. In the budget he has brought down the customs duty which now stands at around 12%.

It’s not clear what the final rate will be, but lower customs duty is definitely a welcome move. Also taxes on CDs have also been brought down, but considering how cheap they are it wouldn’t make a drastic difference to the price of a game.

A lot of gamers in India import games from sites such as Play Asia and many UK sites even to get the games in the first week of its release. It needs to be seen what effect it’ll have on the price of games in retail as distributors in India too import the game CDs (for consoles) rather than importing just a master CD. Exception would be PC games which are still published from within India after importing a master CD.

(Thanks to @FagunB for the heads up)

Following launch of a gaming store by competitor E-xpress, Milestone has launched one in Mumbai — called game4u after their online gaming site. According to GameGuru, “the store is more about delivering an interactive entertainment experience to the customer.”

The store has a special Game4u Girls section and an area where gamers can try out Rock Band kit. The store also has a special blu-ray section if you’re into watching movies in HD (ehmm.. on your PS3). Game4uGirls is a section comprising of games which they think appeals to girls such as Hannah Montana, Littlest Pet Shop etc, there are also a few Wii games in this section. The store will also let gamers trade in older games for new ones according to IVG, but it needs to be seen what kind of prices they’ll offer. If they offer good prices people might prefer such stores where they get money instantly instead of forums.

We had earlier written about Milestone’s plans to open a store when they were hiring people through their blog.

The store launch leaves e-xpress with a question if they should be opening an online store or not. Milestone has both online and offline covered under the game4u branding and not the ball’s in e-xpress’s court to make their move.

News on the competition aside I’m looking forward to console manufacturers tying up with these stores to bring out special super-discounted consoles. such a move will not only give these some publicity, but’ll also do some good for gaming in India which has growing at a slow rate.

If any of you want to check it out, it’s at Mega Mall, Oshiwara (psst do let us know what you think about it )

Saltmarch Media, the same group who had organised Indian Developer Summit is organising Indian Game Developer Summit in Bangalore, on Feb 27 (this weekend). The one day event will see discussions on topics ranging from game development, marketing, team-management among others.

You can check out the schedule here, the talks I’m looking forward to the most are:

• Technology And Market Trends In The PC Game Industry by Keita Iida, part of NVIDIA’s Content & Technology organization since 2001
• Bootstrapping for Mobile Game Development in India by Krishna Chaitanya Pediredla, founder and managing partner of Drona Labs, which focuses on developing games and applications for the Apple Iphone.
• Quality Asset Creation & Sound As A Storyteller by Varun Nair, who has been a part of sound industry for the past four and half years and has dabbled in most areas of sound during this period.
• Stretching Torque to Duplicate a Commercial AAA Game Engine in Ghajini by Imran Khan, VP Technology at FXLabs.
• Preparing for the Great Indian Social Gaming Rush by Sumit Gupta, CEO and Founder of BitRhymes, a social gaming company.
• Open Source for Your Game Development by Kinshuk Sunil, an indie game developer from New Delhi and Yadu Rajiv, an indie game developer from Trivandrum.
• The Creative Core Team by Jithin Rao, a producer at Ubisoft Pune, the game publisher Ubisoft’s first Indian studio.

Now the list is cool if not for the last two which clash, hmm I guess I’ll have to figure out a way to attend both. In case you’re interested, you can register here and do ping me if you’re around. You’ll find all my contact info here.

Gameshastra, the Hyderabad-based company which developed Desi Adda, will make their debut on Sony’s PlayStation Store, with the game ‘Cart Kings’ making them the first Indian company to do so. This move boosts GameShastra’s role as one of Sony’s major partner in India.

The relationship encompasses innovation and delivery of new downloadable games by GameShastra to Sony consumers worldwide which include Desi Adda for PlayStation2 , PSP and Eklavya (under development) for PlayStation 3 platform.

The company is also expanding their studio in Hyderabad, in particularly their development team of designers, artists, animators, developers and QA specialists. It has also established a new game design studio in Hyderabad to accelerate this growth plan and cater to the growing demand of its services worldwide. This facility has the capacity to accommodate 1000+ associates – making it one of the largest Game Studios in South Asia.

With the launch it’s clear that Gameshastra and Sony are targetting Indian diaspora rather than resident Indians as Playstation Store is not accessible in India by default (there are work arounds).  The launch could also mean that Sony will open up their stores in India sooner or later considering the competition they’re facing from Microsoft despite slashing down price of PS3.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Sony starts bundling Gameshastra’s under-development game, Eklavya, along with PS3 when it launches. Sony is already bundling Desi Adda and Human Boy Warrior with PS2 in India.

Games n Gadgets, a games-only shop which opened about 6 months ago or so in Jayanagar has come up with an ambitious plan. They have tied up with Bangalore-based company, mCoupon, who’ll provide them with an innovative loyalty management service.

In this system, anyone can join the GNG club by either just sending a simple sms “ADDME GNG” to 9243000111 or by filling up a simple form at http://gng.mcoupons.in. Once you register, you get 100 points — which converts to Rs200 discount on store — and everytime you buy a new item you get more points. You can accumulate these points to buy goods from their store or use it as a discount card.

This website also describes the benefits and conveniences of having a mobile loyalty program. Basically it includes easy registration, looking up their points at any point of time by sending a simple SMS. They can even raise a query or submit a complaint by sending sms “COMPLAINT GNG <complaint>” or “QUERY GNG <query>”. When the complaint/query is resolved by the the store, the sender gets a SMS with the resolution.

This system is no different than the loyalty/membership cards given out shopping chains such as Shopper’s Stop, the key here is the SMS shortcode technology used by mCoupons.

Gamers n Gadgets are also the official Gaming Partners for the PC-Expo which is being organised in Palace ground from February 19 (Friday, today) to February 22.

They’ll also be organising a corporate level Wii Gaming championship in those 4 days.

We had written earlier about how game4u, an initiative by Milestone Interactive (game distributors) who were planning to launch a retail outlet for selling games and accessories. Looks like someone else has beat them to it — as a new retail chain called ‘Games the Shop’ has been launched in R-city mall in Mumbai and according to MCV,

The owners plan to open an additional 15 stores over the coming year, all of which will stock both modern formats such as Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii as well as handheld and older consoles like the PS2.

Other promised in-store features include demo pods, specialist advisors and both chart and discount titles.

Sounds like a good deal except for the fact that the post doesn’t mention the name of the company, but it does mention Anand Khemani to be the director of the chain. Anand Khemani, for the record, is the CEO of e-xpress interactive, one to the top game distributors in the country. So now we finally have a strong competition between distributors. When will Milestone launch their store? I hope they don’t delay much for their own good.

We haven’t heard of any gaming tourney since BYOC, now esports India has listed two, and both are in Hyderabad.

The first is RGCL Tournament

Team games

CS, DOTA

(First Prize – 25K, Second – 10K for both)
Individual games

COD4 Modern Warfar

FIFA 10

(First Prize – 10K, Second – 5K for both)

Venue

Jubille Hills Hyderabad, Rd. no. 36, HYDERABAD, SVM@36 , RUSH- FEEL IT( GAMING ZONE)

Time

Saturday, 16 January 2010 10:00

The other event is the finals of IMBA Gamer, you’ll find some CS and DOTA gods here

Venue : Rush Gaming cafe, Hyderabad
Time: Jan 30th at 10.00am  onwards

That’s all for now folks

2009 was a great year for this blog. For god’s sake it was shifted to an independent domain this year. I’ve seen it grow from 10 visitors to a day to a few hundred over the year. I’ve also seen a lot of change happening in India gaming industry — for good!

PS3 became cheaper, launched slimmer version, and Microsoft is coming out with a few good schemes for Xbox360 after killing pro model and launching Arcade +1

Couple of India themed games released and flopped. Ghajini was pathetic, Desi-Adda was so-so. -1

EA shut down marketing division in India during recession, which meant they tied up for fewer events. -1

Sega titles started releasing in  India +1

UTV is working on 3 console games (AAA titles) through it’s studios based in UK +1

EA games available through Indiagame’s GoD service +1

BYOC goes national, WCG India continues to be a disappointment. +1-1

An Mumbaikar sets a Guinness record playing GTA for 40hrs straight! +1

More stores to buy games from in India Milestone, game distributors, launches online store. +1

Redington, who distribute EA’s Xbox360 games in India, raised prices beyond Rs3k mark.. importing FTW! -1

Alienware launches gaming PC in India

Overall +3 rating for gaming this year in India. So what can we expect this year. I love to speculate so here are my predictions for this year

1> Xbox 360 price drop (by a few thousands, perhaps a cheaper elite model)

2> Cheaper games for PC

3> Better deals for second hand games online

4> More and better organised tourneys (now that the market is coming back on track)

5> More gaming blogs to make this list longer =)

Do you have any adition to make to the list? Anything I missed? How was the year for you as a gamer?