Gaming translation: 3 emerging markets every developer should know about

With the global gaming market shooting past the $125.3 billion mark this year, developers are understandably looking for emerging markets to make the most of this rapidly expanding industry.

Things change quickly in this field, but there are three emerging markets that stand out for developers looking to establish themselves before the competition gets too hot to handle. In this article, we are revealing the most exciting countries for game developers to add to their target markets for the coming years ahead.

#1: China – the major market still ignored by many

Of Asia’s many fruitful gaming markets, China is undoubtedly the most promising, but even some of the biggest developers continue to pay China less attention than it deserves. This is great news for the devs who take China seriously and make the effort to translate and localise their games for the Chinese market.

Opportunities missed by the biggest developers are hard to come by – especially in such an obvious target market as China – and it is incredible that we can still talk about this as an emerging market in 2018.

Keep this in mind when it comes to gaming translation.

#2: Russia – a huge population maturing as a gaming community

While China is the world’s largest population, Russia is by far the largest nation on the planet by land mass and its gaming population is coming of age in the 21^st century. According to Newzoo, 44% of the online gaming population remains PC-orientated, but the rise of mobile gaming has sparked a new generation of gamers who are hungry for translated and localised titles.

With 65% of the country’s online population engaged in at least one form of gaming, Russia’s large population still retains a huge amount of space to grow and this makes it a market that developers cannot afford to ignore right now.

#3: Brazil – the developing economy you want to pay attention to

Brazil is the world’s fifth largest population and one of the most rapidly developing economies. South America’s largest population is currently the world’s 13^th largest gaming market, according to Newzoo, but this doesn’t tell the whole story.

Brazil’s 211+ million population – the fifth largest in the world – is by far the largest “developing” gaming market in the world with huge room for growth over the coming decades. Growth is quick in Brazil, where internet penetration is still maturing. Roughly 142 million of 211 million Brazilians are currently online and the number is rapidly rising as the mobile web becomes more accessible to everyone.

Mobile has only recently overtaken PC and console gaming in Brazil, though, so we are not talking about a mobile-only market by any means. There is very little gender divide in Brazil’s gaming community either – in fact, the majority of gamers in Brazil are women (52.6%), which means you really can target the country’s entire population across both genders and different age groups.

While the English-speaking gaming community remains the largest in terms of revenue (mostly thanks to the US), China is the largest single gaming market in the world. Despite this, China is not getting the attention it should from game developers and the same could be said for Russia and Brazil.

If you are looking for the emerging markets where growth potential is at its maximum, these are ones to look at.