Why Don’t Cricket Games Succeed?

Sports games are really starting to take over with some of the biggest in the market only seeing growth over the past two years – whether this be online motorsports through iRacing and similar platforms, soccer with the FIFA games, or basketball with the NBA titles. They ‘ve grown so big that many sports betting not on gamstop sites have even explored options in wagers on these games – but for cricket fans there has been a notable hole in the market as cricket games are few and far between and tend not to do so well – but why is it that cricket games don’t succeed?

Tough to deliver on the three pillars of the sport – There are three major aspects that make up the game of cricket, and all are very tactile experiences too with batting, bowling, and fielding. There’s a nuance to becoming good at every aspect, and successfully transitioning that into a video game is something that studios so far haven’t been able to do. There may be an opportunity in the future when video games and controls evolve further, but for now it doesn’t seem like it’s easy to replicate what makes the game so exciting to many players and fans and will likely be a continued reason why cricket games struggle to grow in success.

A big market, but not well spread – Cricket does have quite a large following mostly in the UK, Australia, and parts of Asia too with India and the Middle East, this brings in a very large number of fans to the sport but is also a limited factor for the game’s success. In the past, studios like EA have tried to push the games, and found the most sales in these two markets but didn’t succeed out of these regions – without a huge number of sales opportunities, it limits how big the games can get.

There’s still a strong potential, however – New technology may be the answer for the success, the launch of virtual reality could give the more immersive gameplay and with motion controls or handheld controls it could provide the immersion that many players are looking for, the growth seen in simulation hardware could meet the tactility requirements to make the games feel more interactive, and every step along the way could see change.

Cricket is a growing sport too, so the time is certainly now for a studio to get a video game just right and the capitalize on this growing audience particularly as gaming shows no signs of slowing down either.