Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam Have the Best Growth of Online Gaming Market in Southeast Asia

Niko Partners released a research suggesting that Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam are three most competitive countries for gaming industry to be glorious in Southeast Asia. In 2014, the online gaming market in Southeast Asia, both PC-based and mobile-based, worth up to $784,4 million (around Rp 9,6 trillion).

Niko Partners’ Managing Partner Lisa Cosmas Hanson revealed that the Southeast Asian gaming market is often compared to Chinese, and that the gap between those two is only a couple of years.

“The Southeast Asian gamers love massively online battle arena (MOBA), shooter, and mobile games, just as the Chinese. Even so, unlike Southeast Asian gamers, older gamers in China still prefer MMORPG-based games which give more profit to the game developers. It’s been a challenge for the developers to increase their profit through Southeast Asian gamers’ favorite genre,” Hanson continued.

The research discovered that there are 119 million mobile gamers and 79 million PC gamers in Southeast Asia. This year, only 7% of PC gamers don’t play mobile games, way lower than last year’s figure where 25% of PC gamers didn’t play them.

This research accommodates most of Indonesian game developers’ tendency to target the mobile segment. That’s is basically the reason why East Ventures put their money on Alkemis Games. A number of titans, like Garena, OffGamers, Asiasoft, and MOL, are also ready to compete in the regional market.

Niko predicts that Indonesia will enjoy the most revenue growth until 2018, while Vietnam will have the most significant growth of the number of gamers for the next four years.