JioGames will bring popular SEGA Corporation titles to India
Home-grown telecom provider Reliance Jio has partnered with popular Japanese game developer and publisher SEGA Corporation. The partnership will make the latter's popular game titles available on the JioGames Store. The partnership was confirmed by SEGA in Japan last week. For starters, iconic titles such as Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and Streets of Rage 3 will be made available to Indian audiences.
JioFiber users will get to access the games first
Since the pandemic left many people confined to their homes with time on their hands, gaming in India saw immense growth. Mint reported that the two SEGA games will make their way to Indian shores and JioFiber users will get to access them first. SEGA confirmed that it will be responsible for localizing languages for the titles and incorporating them into the required systems.
SEGA's games are lightweight, should be playable on JioPhone too
Jio will distribute the games through its set-top boxes (STBs) and the JioGames Store app preinstalled on JioPhones and STBs. This is also the first time that these SEGA games (Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and Streets of Rage 3) will be available in Hindi and Tamil. These games aren't resource-intensive. So, it's likely that they'll be playable on devices such as the JioPhone.
'Sonic the Hedgehog,' 'Streets of Rage' are popular SEGA games
Interestingly, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 features one of SEGA's most iconic characters (the blue hedgehog) who has since starred in movies too. The game debuted in 1992 and it follows Sonic's journey to stop the evil Doctor Robotnik from stealing the Chaos Emeralds. Streets of Rage 3, called Bare Knuckle 3 in Japan, is a popular SEGA sidescroller street-fighting game that debuted in 1994.
India accounted for 7.3+ billion game installs in 2020
The partnership makes good business sense since the titles chosen for the initial release are evergreen and designed to be accessible. Additionally, India's gaming market has been witnessing steady growth. SensorTower reported that India alone accounted for 17 percent of worldwide downloads for mobile games in the first nine months of 2020, with a total of 7.3 billion installs.
