Video games are one of the largest and fastest growing industries in the world economy, with combined income long exceeding that of the music and film industries. At the same time, as the experience of many startups shows, this industry is far from saturation. There is still plenty of room for new projects, including marketplaces. Therefore, in this article we will tell you in detail how to create an online video game store like softkeymarket.com, what you need for this, what nuances you need to take into account and how much such development costs approximately.
As with common e-commerce startups, when developing your own online video game store, the first thing you need to do is decide what and to whom you will sell. In the case of a video game store, this decision comes down to the choice of the gaming platform - the type of device on which people will play video games store . Such platforms can be large and portable consoles, computers, smartphones, tablets, browsers. VR devices are also gaining popularity recently, but this is happening rather slowly.
It would be wrong to choose games by direction - shooter, arcade, role-play, simulator, strategy, tactics or MMOG, since games can be downloaded from the marketplace built directly into the game console. There is simply no reason for players to look elsewhere for the game - it's harder, longer and often more expensive. Therefore, you need to lure people to your site in a different way.
Another option is to offer players games with enhanced content. This is also a traditional practice: the player buys not just a game, but also several mods to it, which add bonus levels, items, locations, etc. You can create such mods yourself or outsource a game development company. In addition, the mods can be developed by the players themselves, and you will choose among the best and finance their finishing off.
Besides choosing a gaming platform
Implementation of digital distributions is easier from a technical point of view, but more difficult from a marketing point of view: you need to somehow get people to buy games not in the store built into the game console, but on your online platform. And the solution with discounts is not applicable here (this will be discussed below in the text).
The last option seems more tempting, since here you can make discounts by reducing your profits. However, this market is rapidly decreasing due to the fact that people are buying less and less games on physical media, preferring to download them directly to the console.
This will affect the interface language, business registration and customer preferences. The latter is very important as players in different regions prefer different games and platforms. For example, in the US, both Playstation and Xbox are in demand, while shooters, arcades, sports simulations and MMOGs are popular. In Japan and other East Asian countries, most people play Playstation and love shooters, MMOGs and JRPGs. In Eastern Europe, people prefer computer games, in terms of games - MMOGs, shooters and old-school RPGs.
