"Casual and social games will be vital to growing the number of gamers and bringing digital games into the mainstream," Dharia said.

Online unique gamers in the Asia Pacific region are expected to surpass one billion in 2016 and just under 900 million mobile gamers.

"The growth of digital gaming in Asia-Pacific will give service providers an opportunity to grow their revenues in the region," Dharia said.

"Telcos in particular could harness this growth by offering gaming-specific connections, or bundling mobile games with data access packs."

Dharia also expects that the shift in distribution of payments offline might "encourage the number of in-app game purchases."