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?

After Fifa, NFL, NBA, Cricket, now Indian games are ready to mark their presence on the gaming arena with Desi Adda: Games of India. Sony  has developed this console game that includes indigenous sports like Pachisi, Goat & the tiger, Kite Fight, Kabaddi, Gilli Danda and the beat matching dance game. The game is developed by Hyderabad based GameShastra, for PS2.

First Looks

“First impression is the last impression”. This saying has always mattered and will matter in the future too. Desi Adda has lived up to this saying. After checking out the Hanuman earlier which disappointed us, Desi Adda by the looks of it impresses us here. Hope it lives up to the impression it has created here.

The game surprisingly has a s ’story line’. You play the part of Avinash, son of an NRI businessman, who comes to visit his ancestral village (Dil Bole Hadippa in a rural way ). The guy has spent his time abroad, and this being his his first visit to an Indian village, it fascinates him. The story unfolds as he roams around the village and plays the different village games. We hope they won’t have cheesy hindi dialogues like in the Hanuman game which was released earlier.

Priced at Rs499 for PS2 and Rs999 for the PSP (yes there’s a PSP version!), the game is playable in 3 Indian languages : Hindi, Punjabi and in Tamil and this game is the first game completely developed by Indian Development Studio for the PSP.

Developed on a low budget, what we think here is that the game should get a fair trial & has to be seen as a advancement in the Indian gaming industry (trying to be a nationalist here ).

We are curious to see how they implemented games like kabaddi,gilli danda on a console and how the game mechanics are going to be. Watch out this space for more updates.

PS: Again, we’re hoping,  praying, pleading that it’s not like Hanuman. If it is, we’re not even bothering to play it fully like we did last time!