India’s largest private sector telecom player Bharti Airtel has launched a triple-play arcade puzzle game Getris on all three services of Airtel — mobile, Internet and direct to home (DTH).
Based on the popular game Tetris, Getris is targeted at the 14-18 age group and was available for a free preview on Diwali for Airtel’s mobile, broadband and DTH customers.
“This is Airtel’s first attempt to launch a game on all three platforms. Anyway, games on DTH is a new phenomenon. An Airtel customer can play the game on any one of the three services and seamlessly continue his experience on the remaining two platforms using a unique code on each occasion. The game will float across the three screens,” said Sugato Banerji, chief marketing officer — DTH, Bharti Airtel
Getris will be available for Airtel’s DTH customers at Rs 25 for every two months and Rs 10 per month for Airtel mobile customers. However, for Airtel broadband customers, it will be available for free.
The Getris game starts with the user arranging falling “pingoos” to create horizontal lines. Once a full horizontal line is filled up with the “pingoos”, the line disappears. After user completes a level of the game and exits, a unique code is generated. This code can be used to play the game, from the level where the user exited, on any platform. There will be a total of 100 levels for the game and the speed will increase with each level up.
Explaining that transporting games to DTH was not easy, Banerji said: “We will not have multiplayer games on the DTH platform. However, going forward, this month we will have racing games and ‘match the following’ games for a younger audience on DTH.”
The company is evaluating 50 games on a six-weekly basis and will do a customer feedback post. “We expect around 1.5 per cent of our customer base to play games on DTH,” added Banerji.