Cricket 22 Is India's Cyberpunk 2077 Minus the Hype
In the second 0451 Games newsletter, I mentioned that Cricket 22 has been a steady seller at retail since its launch on December 2 last year. What’s more is, it appears to have held its Rs. 3,999 price tag too with most stores (outside of Amazon’s rampant, regular discounting) sticking to it nearly two months since release. However, cracks are beginning to show.
“We usually move 50 to 70 units a week,” a Delhi-based store owner speaking on condition of anonymity tells me. “Now it’s dropped by half, and in fact, we have some customers demanding refunds.”
What was a dependable, steady seller at retail has slowed down tremendously in the last couple of weeks. So what happened? Well, there are several factors at play.
Time to say Dubai
For one, there’s been a steady influx of grey and parallel imports of Cricket 22. What’s more is, they’re 30 to 40 percent priced lower than the Indian price of Rs. 3,999. Clocking in between Rs. 2,400 and Rs. 2,700 it makes these versions a lot more attractive for customers that simply want a better deal. These copies of Cricket 22 have been making it to India either smuggled through passengers or by the crate via couriers.
“I was offered 800 units on both PS4 and PS5” says a Chennai-based retailer. “And the price was good enough for me to sell at Rs. 2,500 and still make a profit. All the stock was coming from Dubai.”
I’ve heard familiar statements from other stores across the country. Cricket 22 stock earmarked for the Middle East is making to India at a steady clip. The reason, according to grey market suppliers, is simple: the distributor for the game in that region bit off more than they can chew.
“They took around 20,000-25,000 units,” says one Mumbai-based wholesaler. “Sure, the Middle East, UAE in particular, has a large expat and Indian population that would play the game, but it isn’t enough to buy all the stock committed to Nacon [Cricket 22’s publisher].”
A game that’s still broken
Although I don’t know what the exact official import quantity for Cricket 22 is for India, it’s safe to assume from what I’ve been told that it would be in the same range as that of the Middle East.
And while this gives us an idea of why sales of the game through official channels are slowing, there’s another concern — Cricket 22’s ongoing technical issues. The game has had 20 patches or so for the PS4 version and around 22 on the PS5 version. These range from vague “general stability” to rectifying more egregious omissions such as missing eyebrows.
The most glaring of these are the ongoing problems accessing the game’s community features which let you apply teams, kits, and likenesses closer to what they are in the real world. It’s a crucial part of the experience for many given that Cricket 22 doesn’t have the official likenesses and licenses for players and teams like you’d expect from NBA 2K and FIFA.
Who is buying Cricket 22 in India?
“We've had customers buy the game, come back, and ask for a refund because they aren’t able to access the community feature — the game crashes for them,” says a purchase manager at an independent game store in Hyderabad. “We usually tell them to not use the feature and wait for an update, or if they make too much of a fuss, we accept a return in exchange for another game that actually works.”
This is a problem that’s fast emerging for many a store. Of late, the backlash, retailers tell me, is worse than what was seen with Cyberpunk 2077 and Battlefield 2042 particularly due to the fact that the PS4 version is the biggest seller. The average customer for Cricket 22 is an audience across age groups that’s predominantly male and even more mainstream than the type that buys yearly releases like FIFA or the evergreen GTA V.
They’re on last generation consoles like the PS4 (usually purchased after multiple rounds of price cuts in the last couple of years), are extremely value conscious, and believe in getting their money’s worth. Suffice to say, it’s not the kind of crowd that takes too kindly to being told their game is defective after buying it.
“All the good stuff they did in Cricket 19 has been literally rolled back,” says Rishu Singh, a sealant manufacturer by trade. “You can game the AI easily…in comparison [Cricket] 19 was top of the line simulation.”
My experience with the game mirrors his. However what makes it worse is that I’m playing the PS5 version, which has still seen multiple crashes across patches. Now, I’m afraid of booting it up in fear of it damaging the system.
Nonetheless, it’s fascinating that in a post-Cyberpunk 2077 world we still have games of this quality (or lack thereof)making it to the shelves. And while Cricket 22 is nowhere as hyped up as CD Projekt’s last game, it’s suffering from problems aplenty — both on the pitch and off — which are likely to annoy loyal fans in the country and do irreparable damage to the brand in India.
Other interesting insights from the Indian games market:
WWE 2K22 Deluxe Edition, Elden Ring, Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, and Grid Legends are skipping the Xbox physical release in India. No surprises here. If you want them on disc, your local store might be able to help you out or specialist retailers like Mcube Games. Expect more of the same through the generation (like the last one) as Microsoft, despite its pending acquisition of Activision, is quite inconsequential in the country at the moment when it comes to retail in India.
Horizon Forbidden West’s Collector’s and Special Editions will make it here. However, owing to logistics and scheduling issues they might see miss the game’s release date of February 18. Sony won’t let stores list these editions for pre-order just yet. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this happen, with Ghost of Tsushima’s Collector’s Edition making it post-launch.
Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection is out this week and it’s pretty good. And thanks to the Uncharted movie on the way, Sony’s actually using it as an opportunity to market the game in India, with in-store tie-ins — something which it neglected to even do with Uncharted 4 despite a massive global push at the time. Progress!
Addendum: the fine folks running the @XboxIndia_ account reached out following the last newsletter regarding Microsoft's pending Activision acquisition to clarify that "are not affiliated with MS other than being part of the Xbox Ambassador program" and that they "want to show [Xbox] demand [in India] to the folks at MS/Xbox”.