Middle East games market "growing like crazy"
The Middle East and North African region has been a strong growth area for Peak Games
As the game industry continues to grow in the mobile and social media market, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have become one of the strongest growth regions. Publisher Peak Games is one of the leaders in the region, with 300,000 concurrent users (CCU) and 11.8M daily active users (DAU) across Turkey and MENA.
"We consider Turkey a significant player in the MENA region," Peak Games co-founder and chief strategy officer Rina Onur told [a]list daily. "Turkey will continue its rapid growth both in terms of Internet and smartphone/tablet penetration. The MENA region has the second highest rate of smartphone shipments out of Asia, so the region is growing like crazy. Following Turkey are Gulf region countries such as Saudi Arabia and Emirates. These countries will continue to grow both on PC and mobile; that's why opportunities are almost limitless here."
Peak Games' Plus Franchise is one of the publishers biggest draws; the games are all digital versions of traditional and popular board, card, and tabletop games in the region.
"Our most popular games are those in the Plus Franchise. They are community driven, multiplayer, synchronous titles and are part of the everyday lifestyle in Turkey," said Onur. "The Plus Franchise alone has more than 300,000 concurrent users and includes 6 different games: Okey, Okey Plus, 101 Plus, Tavla Plus, Batak and Pool Plus. In addition; our flagship mid-core title War of Mercenaries thrives from a dedicated community that is interested in multiplayer combat and empire building."
Though Peak Games' primary business is on Android and iOS smartphones, tablets are increasing in strength in the region.
"Tablets are increasing in volume rapidly in our region as well," Onur explained to [a]list daily. "We have brought our flagship titles to both iOS and Android tablets, which are performing extremely well, so as we continue building community driven games, tablets as a platform, will be a major target for us. Even though currently, smartphones are over-performing tablets overall - due to the sheer volume of devices that are lying around in the region - we believe tablets will become a significant strategic platform for game developers."
Check out the rest of the interview at our sister site the [a]list daily.