Friday, September 15 2006 16:19 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Mumbai: 'Hungama', South Asia's leading entertainment portal, content developer and aggregator has launched India's First Free Multi-User online gaming portal, www.gaminghungama.com. Hungama is targeting at achieving a registered user base of 1 million in the first year.

Commenting on the launch of its latest offering in the digital space, Mr. Neeraj Roy, CEO and MD of Hungama states, "It is estimated that, the online gaming market in India is at $30 million, of which mobile gaming and internet-based gaming contribute $8 million each in revenues. It is being expected that by the year 2010-11 the software gaming industry will be $700 million in size and console, mobile and broadband or internet-based gaming will each be one-third of the pie and through gaminghungama we will be ready to meet this ever growing demand."

The games have a simple and easy to understand Gaming interface coupled with a Chat window. This allows the user to interact with his opponent as he plays a game, a first among gaming sites. Along with games the site also has the latest reviews of PC, Console and Mobile Games from across the world, the freshest gaming News relayed using RSS feeds, a user forum and a downloads section.

"The prime focus of the site is to provide an engaging platform for the gamers across the world and our aim is to become the de-facto gaming portal in India within six months" says Mr. Carlton D'Silva, Creative Director, Hungama.

The games are original concepts and are based on popular themes with titles such as Bollywood Squares, a hilarious take on Hollywood Squares, the popular American TV show.

The other titles include Quick-Et, a really fast cricket game, Star Gaze, a Bollywood Celebrity Quiz game, Top The Class, a Massive Multi-User game that can support over 500 users at any given point.

"The site will be launched with multi-user games to begin with which will serve as an educational exercise for the gamers that are not so used to multi-user games. The games are kept simple in nature and at sometime in our lives played the physical form of the game. This makes it easier for the gamers to comprehend the games and quicker to get started. Post the initial push of multi-user games; we will eventually release single-user online and casual games", adds Carlton D'Silva.

The site includes interesting games like Box 'EM' IN, Bollywood Squares, Classic Checkers, Snakes and Ladder etc. that many of us played in those boring classrooms using pen and paper - the same will now be available on gaminghungama.com. In addition to this Gaming Hungama is launching with total of 15 Multi-User games, with 4 new games being added every month.

That amounts to over 50 Multi-User games in a year and almost twice as many single user games.