By Fredrick Obura
Mobile game developers have found a new platform to market their work globally. Nazara Technologies, a mobile games developer and publisher, and Electronic Arts Inc, announced they have entered into an exclusive business alliance to distribute East Africa’s collection of world-class mobile games to over 770 million mobile phone consumers across Africa.
The partnership entitles Nazara to exclusive distribution rights of East Africa’s mobile games to all telecom operators across the African continent in 49 countries including Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria and Ghana.
EA’s portfolio of products includes top quality games such as Need For Speed, The Run SimCity, PacMan, Monopoly, Medal of Honour among others, which will be made available to consumers on JAVA and Android platforms through “N Play”, one of Nazara’s high traffic mobile gaming platforms. “We are delighted to extend the reach of our relationship with EA to cover the emerging gaming market in the African continent. The African market today is a virgin market in relation to the mobile gaming and content services and the feedback we have received so far is that the consumers are interested in quality gaming services,” said Savio Saldanha, Nazara’s CEO Middle East & Africa.
He observed that the company will introduce a Games Club Service where they will rent out games at a very reasonable price to mobile game consumers, which will be a highly successful especially in the East Africa.
“In addition, mobile in itself has already revolutionised the Sub-Saharan African region and yet demand still continues to grow by almost 50 per cent a year.
The region has some of the highest levels of mobile internet usage globally with 3G penetration levels forecast to grow by 46 per cent through 2016 as the use of mobile-specific services develops and as a company, we would like to tap into this potential in relation to mobile gaming,” he added.
