Sony Plans Online Game Studio in India

Seeing a huge potential market in young people in India, Sony Online Entertainment LLC plans to develop online games here with local content and a local partner.

The company is talking to developers and aims to set up the studio early next year, likely in the city of Bangalore, David Christensen, the company's business development and international operations vice president, said Wednesday.

"We need to have Indian content for our games and we are looking for local partners," Christensen said on the sidelines of a gaming conference in Mumbai, India's finance and entertainment hub.

"We will contribute our technology to the joint venture," he said. The local partner would be expected to provide the creative talent for the games and chip in toward setting up the studio.

Sony recently teamed with Virgin Comics, a Bangalore-based collaboration of self-help guru Deepak Chopra, filmmaker Shekhar Kapur and Sir Richard Branson of Virgin Group Ltd. With Sony, Virgin Comics is developing a multiplayer online game based on "Ramayan 3329," a comic book written by Chopra and Kapur and inspired by a famous Indian epic about a battle against demons.

Online gaming is just catching on in India with about 2.8 million devotees. Developers expect the market to explode as broadband penetration grows. Analyst firm Pearl Research expects the country's online game market to reach $200 million by 2010, up from $4 million now.

The Ramayan comic was released in the United States last year, and Virgin is in talks on a movie version.

"If the game is successful in India, we will take it to Europe and North America," said Christensen. "It is a fresh international story and if it is created into a movie it could be a big global property."

Virgin's president, Suresh Seetharamanin, said the company was in the process of adding to the creative team that would work on the game with Sony.

"It is one of the most exciting things to happen in India with Sony being one of the biggest players in the online game world," he said.