Saudi Arabia Surpasses Turkey in Mobile Game Expenditures

Tamatem, a Jordan-based company that publishes mobile games for Arabic-speaking markets, thinks that 2020 will be dominated by smartphone gaming. COO of the company Middle East and North Africa It also shares very interesting information about its market.

Tamatem CEO Eyad Al Basheer, so far They experienced a 250% increase and says that this year Saudi Arabia has surpassed Turkey in consumer spending.

“Middle East and North Africa are fast growing markets”

(Consumers' monthly gaming expenses)

Eyad Al Basheer, “The Middle East and North Africa is a fast-growing market, with Saudi Arabia surpassing China in average spend per user.” 7 times bigger, the highest ranked in the world. Monetization is very high in this region.” he said.

The company, which has more than 50 games from more than 15 developers, helps localize the games and publish them in the region. Al Basheer, so far more than 100 million He also said they had the download.

(Middle East monthly mobile game download numbers)

Al Basheer said that although Arabic is the fourth most spoken language in the world, Arabic content is less than 1%. there is a big demand and Tamatem also helps international developers enter this region, he says.

Al Basheer says there are cultural sensitivities in the Arab region, and the names of places such as casinos are changed to local versions, and sometimes even the locations are changed according to the respective cities in the region. Original music in a game in Saudi Arabia It was changed because it was not culturally accepted. also expresses.

“You can't change the culture” said Al Basheer "It's very difficult for international developers to have an idea of ​​what to expect when they enter the region. But we know what Arab players expect from a game." he says.

COO says most of the Arabic games in app stores Targeted at male users He states that they could not find a game targeting female users. Al Basheer says that they have a game called Fashion Queen that targets female users and it is performing quite well. He also states that applications on Google are downloaded more, but monetization is higher in App Store applications.