Inform-mobil (IMMO), Russian mobile content and service provider, has recently published a list of top 10 most sold Java mobile games in Russia. According to the list, the most downloaded title was Who Wants To Be A Millionare? 2010, followed by two racing games Dakar 2010 and Need For Speed Shift. Most of the games were produced by global game publishers like Glu Mobile, EA Mobile and Disney. However, compared to similar lists IMMO has been publishing over the years, the number of most downloaded games by Russian developers has increased from one in 2008 to four in 2010. Russian game developers behind the four out of ten most popular mobile games for the last year included Herocraft, Net Lizard and INT Corporation. Most of those companies were founded in early 2000 and have developed dozens of games over the years.

Russian gaming market has been traditionally dominated by PC games. Even when console games were taking over the world elsewhere, PC games persevered in Russia. However, many of the local game developers did not survive the financial crisis and those who did shifted towards social and casual games. Russian mobile games market has been steadily growing since 2004, though it is currently outstripped by the growth of online and browser games. Social gaming has been a growing trend in Russia as well, hence the local annual gaming conference the All-Russian Conference on Game Industry last year focused on social networks and socialization of mobile platforms.

Below is the list of the top 10 most sold Java mobile games in Russia (Source: IMMO, tipped by Russian-Mobile):

Looking at those titles, it seems that most of the games are strongly oriented towards male demographic. Hence, women either play less games on their mobiles or they play free applications, which are not included in that list.

Russian mobile gaming market is growing by an estimated 10% annually and in 2009 its total volume allegedly was around $30M. Compared to Western Europe and North America, Russian mobile gaming market is quite small, though it is predicted to exponentially grow in the upcoming years.

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