Airtel, India’s largest mobile carrier, has launched a flat-fee subscription service called Games Club, enabling users to download unlimited mobile games.

Airtel, which currently boasts around 100 million customers, will offer games from a variety of publishers. The companies delivering the service for Airtel are German firm SYNAPSY and Indian mobile entertainment company Nazara, with Nazara sourcing the games and SYNAPSY providing the back-end infrastructure. In-game licensing and payment options will also be enabled via SYNAPSY’s wrapping technology.

Nitish Mittersain, CEO of Nazara said:

India is one of the interesting and biggest markets for mobile gaming content already with extraordinary growth rates. We believe that we will be able now to give even more impulses to the market and can reach new user groups by offering much more flexible purchase options and especially the innovative mobile games flatrate GamesClub that is unique in the Indian market and which provides a huge competitive advantage.

From SYNAPSY, Waldemar Mehlmann-Selin, Managing Partner, said:

We are more than excited to reach India’s 300 million user base with great mobile games that have been and will be enhanced using our JarJacket Wrapper Engine and are confident that, together with our Partner Nazara, India’s consumers will love the new service.

Read more at the SYNAPSY press release

Andy’s Opinion

This deal should prove popular with Indian mobile users, offering an interesting and cheap alternative to the AppStore and other mobile games marketplaces. iPhone uptake has been slow in India and the majority of the population use pre-pay SIMs rather than signing up to expensive air-time contracts. A flat-rate deal on games should be popular with those who don’t have the disposable income to splash out on flashy smartphones or expensive apps.

Ultimately, the popularity of the service will depend on the number of high-quality games that Games Club can attract from leading publishers.

The other deciding factor will be whether the Games Club service deliberately cripples the games with SYNAPSY’s flexible JarJacket wrapper technology. In the worst case, the basic flat-rate service will provide only time-limited game demos, with the capability to unlock the full version with a small additional payment. Whilst this is attractive to games publishers and distributors wishing to maximise revenue from their catalogs, it can be a real turn-off for customers, particularly if they think they are signing up for full games only to realize they have to pay more to keep on playing.

As long as Airtel are upfront with Games Club users about what they are getting and whether they might encounter additional costs, the service should be a great success.