What You Might Not Know About the Latin American Games Industry

Gamasutra
By Robert Levitan, Pando Networks CEO
Full Article

How can a game publisher succeed in a region where getting their titles into gamers’ hands is difficult, or even impossible? Latin America, and Brazil in particular, are cited as a rapidly growing market for games. Nobody is disputing that there are millions of gamers across Latin America, and their appetite for MMOs and other online titles is growing. Just last week, FPS-MMO Operation7 was downloaded over 30,000 times by gamers in Colombia, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, and Peru. Meanwhile, in Brazil alone, gamers downloaded Combat Arms 69,000 times last week.

However, in a recent study, my company Pando Networks analyzed the download speeds and completion rates in 224 countries around the world and Latin American territories such as Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia ranked near the bottom. In the very first blog I wrote here on Gamasutra, I stressed how crucial it was to provide quick and easy downloads in order to ensure the success of an online game, yet getting a game in Brazil will take up to ten times longer and fail far more frequently than getting the same title in the United States.

It’s not my intention to be a naysayer and warn you away from expanding your business into South America. On the contrary, I am bullish about the online game industry in that region. I’ve been in Sao Paolo meeting with game companies. The energy in the air is palpable when local game company executives discuss the growth and opportunity that is possible there. In many ways it’s reminiscent of the early days of the internet and I felt like I was reliving my own start in the online business world in 1995.

Success as a publisher is certainly possible in countries such as Brazil; it simply takes a better understanding of the unique challenges that the area presents, and the right approach to those obstacles.

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Excerpt image courtesy of Gamasutra.