- 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.
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.
Localising a game or any app is about more than just translating the content to a local language. Cultural differences, sometimes, have to be taken into account as well. For instance, the same 11-player ball game is called 'soccer' in the US but 'football' in the UK. So, a sports game would have to take that into account even though the language would be English for both countries.
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.
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.
Charusadhirakul explains that while over two-thirds of Android devices in the world are located in emerging markets, these markets have a high proportion of entry-level phones. Which is why the other two aspects of Google's strategy for game developers is to optimise games for entry-level phones and adjust the price points for local users.
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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