Google arms mobile games with a new feature to target emerging markets like India
- Google announced a new feature that will allow game developers to customise their store listings on Google Play according to country groups at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2019 today.
- The 'Country Targeted Store Listings' feature gives developers the option to create five sets of countries to target.
- Google also outlined the importance of emerging markets like India and and a three-prong strategy that will help games be successful in such markets.
We're seeing some really interesting trends in the industry like the explosion of gaming in India, which is not traditionally a huge gaming market. This is, in part, due to the success of PUBG Mobile. This game has become a cultural phenomenon there.
Google Play's new 'Country Targeted Store Listings', announced at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2019 earlier today let's game developers create up to five groups of countries to target.
The most common pain point that we hear from developers about store listings that although they can already localise in different languages, they want the ability to customise their store listings based on where their users live.
The new feature will allow game developers to customise their store listings based on where their users live as well as their locale setting.
So, being able to customise the store listing means game developers will be able to localise every aspect of the game from the icon to the screenshots that are on display as well as the promo message and trailer video.
We're excited to announce powerful new feature only available in Google Play called 'Country Targeted Store Listings'. With this feature, you can customise your store listings based on the users country as well as their locale setting and from the Play Console you can create up to five different groups of countries to serve to a completely different store listing to each group — complete with full localisation support.
What does that mean for games in India?
Google has never underplayed India's strategic importance. Even at the GDC 2019, partner development managers at Google, Guy Charusadhirakul and Daniel Trocoli, expressed the importance of emerging markets like India for game developers.
In the three-prong strategy Google outlined to break into these emerging markets, one of the key takeaways was to localize and culturize games for specific countries.
The reason we want to talk to you about emerging markets is because we know it is it a big business opportunity for game developers. However, these markets might be as familiar to many of you who may have been more focused on developed markets like the US, Europe, Japan and Korea.
Adjusting the price point is vital because even though the income level in emerging markets like India is on the rise, they're still relatively low compared to developed countries.
Despite all the hoopla around emerging markets, Google's new gaming platform, Stadia will not be available in India just yet. Stadia is built on Google's cloud network, allowing games to be played instantly on Chrome web browsers, Chromebooks and other Chrome devices cutting out the time of having to download a game. In Google CEO Sunda Pichai's own words, it's "a game platform for everyone."
But that doesn't mean that market opportunity should be discounted. Google's own data shows that 7 of the countries among Google's top 20 grossing markets are emerging markets and that their spending has doubled over the last two years.
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