India gets ready for the Blizzard

After being absent from the Indian retail market for as long as I can remember, games developed by Blizzard Entertainment will finally be available in India starting this month. They have partnered up with leading distributor E-xpress Interactive Software Pvt Ltd to bring physical copies of world famous franchises like StarCraft, Diablo, World of Warcraft and Overwatch to the Indian market.

This is a massive step for Blizzard in India especially since the main problem users face in buying their games was the online payment gateway, now this opens the doors to a massive new community for Blizzard. More importantly now that Blizzard is officially going to be present in India, this is great news for Overwatch which seems to be picking up quickly around India. With Blizzard’s Overwatch League set to kick off this year, India could potentially look at a slot sometime in the future as now Blizzard retail in India.

“We’re pleased to be working with E-xpress Interactive to bring our games to India,” said Gio Hunt, executive vice president of corporate operations at Blizzard Entertainment. “We pour a lot of ourselves into the experiences we create, so it’s important to us to be able to share them with the widest possible audience. We’re excited that this collaboration directly supports that goal and helps us welcome more Indian players into the global Blizzard community.” Amit Khemani, Managing Director of E-xpress Interactive software Pvt Ltd, said, “Blizzard’s reputation for creating quality games is widely known in India, and this announcement will bring great joy amongst the Indian gaming community. We highly admire Blizzard’s talent, passion and commitment to create such award-winning games.”

You will be able to find Blizzard titles at Games The Shop, Landmark, Croma, Flipkart and Amazon, among other local retailers. All available games can now be pre-ordered at gamestheshop.com with a release date of April 25, 2017. The prices are reflective of the current standard in the Indian market. For example, Overwatch on consoles will cost you Rs 3,999 while StarCaft II: Legacy of the Void will set you back Rs 999.

Blizzard was one of the few major developers missing from India but their fans no longer need to worry about game availability. This makes purchasing games far more convenient, since earlier the only option left was to use credit cards and download massive chunks of data that was not suitable for the internet conditions in India.