SINGAPORE--Revenues from Singapore's online gaming market is dwarfed by Asian counterparts like Korea and China. However, local authorities aim to carve a niche in the regional online games industry in other ways.
At the CommunicAsia trade show today, the Infocomm Development Authority Singapore (IDA) unveiled a new initiative to lure regional online game developers and distributors to host their offerings on the island-state.
Called "Games Bazzar", the program is based on a pay-per-use pricing model so companies pay for hosting services and bandwidth according to actual usage, IDA said in a statement.
"The Games Bazaar provides utility pricing and scalability so that games companies can now customize their requirements and scale up as the market demands," said Thomas Lin, IDA's director for games and entertainment.
In a bid to convince games providers to consider Singapore as a hosting destination, IDA and partners HP and SingTel EXPAND, a subsidiary of local telco Singapore Telecommunications, will jointly subsidize the costs of making the switch over the next two years. The financing includes everything from hardware, software to services, IDA said.
"IDA together with HP and SingTel EXPAND, will help companies to defray up to 80 percent of the hosting costs during their first six months of trial with Games Bazaar," the parties said.
Beyond subsidies and flexible pricing, plans to partner with regional governments are also in the works. IDA said it has already sealed an agreement with the Korea IT Industry Promotion Agency (KIPA). Under the deal, KIPA will encourage Korean firms to use Singapore as a test bed for online games deployment in Southeast Asia. At the program launch today, two Singapore-based games providers-- iGames Asia and PAN*iMX--have already signed up for the program, it added.
The IDA announcement comes amid booming times for the regional online gaming industry. According to market research firm IDC, the online games segment in Asia-Pacific, excluding Japan, is set to exceed US$1 billion next year.
Korea is currently the largest market for online gaming with subscription revenues of US$397.1 million last year, followed by Taiwan with US$170.4 million. China ranks third with US$159.7 million. Singapore pales in comparison with subscription revenues of US$0.79 million in 2003.
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