Posts Tagged ‘Venturebeat’

Virtual Worlds platform Metaplace to pull the plug in 2010

Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009

It might just be the biggest loss to the virtual world space yet, as San Diego based Metaplace announced recently that they’re shutting down operations as of the 1st of the year.

Metaplace, which provides a platform for anyone to create their own web based virtual world made the closure announcement via email, stating, “Today we have unfortunate news to share with the Metaplace community. We will be closing down our service on January 1, 2010 at 11:59 pm Pacific. We will be having a goodbye celebration party on January 1st at noon Pacific Time.”

The business model itself sounds fairly solid, with users creating virtual worlds ranging from the simple to the relatively complex. Metaplace users could also attend live concert events, watch movies and view art shows together, as well as a host of other virtual events. However, as a revenue generating machine, it simply wasn’t working out. “Unfortunately, over the last few months it has become apparent that Metaplace as a consumer user-generated content service is not gaining enough traction to be a viable product, requiring a strategic shift for our company.”

Moving forward, Metaplace said that it’s shutting down billing immediately, and will refund any virtual item purchase costs and subscriptions for the month of December. Metaplace will leave the doors partially open for virtual world creators to grab their virtual commodities, presumably to allow them to move these creations to other virtual worlds.

The loss of this platform won’t go unnoticed, as approximately 70,000 virtual spaces will disappear as of 11:59 pm on January 1st PST. Moreover, Metaplace was founded by former SOE games vet Raph Koster. Even more interesting, as late as November, Metaplace was still developing the platform, announcing an audio chat feature, as well as investigating ways to integrate with Facebook.

The company Metaplace itself will not be dissolved, but future plans are yet to be determined.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in industry news | No Comments »

 

Hi5 layoffs could have a silver lining

Wednesday, April 1st, 2009

Hi5, the world’s third largest social network hasn’t exactly had it easy this April Fools day.  Both VentureBeat and TechCrunch lit up the airwaves yesterday with reports of this, that and the other.  Let’s take a look at what happened, and what’s going to happen.

hi5logo_300dpi_3300x2550The social network news reports were abuzz yesterday afternoon when rumors were confirmed that hi5 had recently failed to secure another round of funding.  According to MG Siegler’s source, the deal was as good as done, just in need of a few signatures.  This wasn’t just pocket change, as the deal would have been somewhere in the $30 million range, effectively doubling it’s previously raised $35 million.

VentureBeat’s source admitted that hi5 was now down to one group  – the group focusing on entertainment, gaming and microtransactions.

Hold up.  Let me get this straight. The world’s third largest social network was passed over for additional funding, and are now down to the gaming/microtransaction group?  Seriously?  With 62 million monthly visitors, this could be downright huge.

Enter stage left – the silver lining

Ok remaining hi5 folks, take a second and give a deserved lick to those wounds.  Layoffs are never fun.  It’s comeback time.

And coming back they are.  Hi5 has just announced a partnership with games distributor and ad network Mochi Media.  Mochi will introduce 200 flash games initially, with plans for many more to come.  Games on hi5 is not new, as they introduced their virtual currency, Coins, in December of last year, and approximately 40 games back in February.  However, in the newly introduced Mochi Media games, hi5 coins will allow users to buy virtual items, download a select number of games, and access special, or additional features.  It might be fair to say that hi5 is arriving fashionably late to the party, as the site has on average 62 million users per month, but hasn’t really nailed down how to monetize these users.  Given Tencent’s conglomeration of an instant messaging client, social network and web portal recently reported over $1 billion in revenue from a variety of virtual goods, and Habbo recently announcing their $60 million in virtual goods sales (although I’ve also seen $70m and $74m – dang € to $ conversion), chances are hi5 is still very much in the running.  Earlier this month the company stated that they were aiming towards a $25 million take this year, with half of the revenues stemming from virtual goods, half from currently existing advertising.

Again, hi5 may have sustained a significant blow when additional funding fell through, but clearly they’ve already been working on monetization via microtransactions and virtual goods sales, so they’re already one step closer to a complete re-invention of themselves.  Will all of those 62 million users stick around?  That is yet to be seen.  My guess is that sure, some of them may go when they start to see dramatic changes to the site, but on the other side of the coin, by re-inventing themselves as a primary gaming destination, and combine both forms of revenue generation, we might very well see not only the return of hi5, but perhaps a hi10.

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in industry news | No Comments »

 

Microtransactions take the cake in anticipated development survey

Tuesday, March 24th, 2009

According to a survey of approximately 160 members of the games industry, as conducted by VentureBeat, microtransactions took the number one spot in the ‘most impactful’ areas of the games industry.  Smartphones took the number two spot.

Sixty six percent of respondents voted for microtransactions as THE area to watch, while sixty one percent clocked smartphones.  The VentureBeat survey broke user generated content out into it’s own category, but this area has obvious microtransaction implications, and forty three percent gave UGC top ratings.  Without surprise, the current advertising rates freefall also factors into the survey, with only twenty one percent calling IGA the hot spot, and voice recognition rounds out the top four with an eighteen percent vote.
VentureBeat lead writer Dean Takahashi comments, “The trends match closely to what is currently being funded by the venture capital community”

When speaking of platforms with the most potential, naturally, Apple’s iPhone received kudos, receiving a massive seventy four percent vote of confidence from survey responders.  Never left out of a good party, Social Networking nabbed sixty five percent of the vote, casual, web-based platforms, sixty two percent,  and home consoles rounding out the top four in this category at fifty seven percent.

This survey was conducted as part of VentureBeat’s GamesBeat event, which kicks off today in San Francisco, literally just down the street from the GDC.

“The content of GamesBeat was designed to stimulate discussion and understanding of the current and future market trends and attendees will find each of the top trends on the agenda and under discussion both on stage and in the hallways,” says Takahashi.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in industry news | No Comments »

 

KinsIsle Entertainment brings microtransactions AND subscriptions to Wizard101

Tuesday, November 4th, 2008

Want to plunk down your monthly fee and play as much as you want?  That’s fine.  Want to use microtransactions to buy individual pieces and areas of the game?  That’s also fine.  Texas based KingsIsle Entertainment has set out on an interesting experiment whereby they’re now offering players of Wizard 101 the option to play via a subscription payment OR utilize microtransactions to purchase additional areas of the game.

The game’s main features will remain free-to-play but players may now either pay a monthly fee of $6.95 – $9.95 per month to access additional gameplay, or pay as little as $1/ transaction to open smaller, bit sized portions of the game.  Here’s a perfect example of players with plenty of time to play (subscription players) AND casual players that don’t want to commit to a subscription, but still want to enjoy the same level of gameplay (microtransaction players).

“We looked at our feedback and found that half the people liked subscriptions and another group wanted micro-transactions,” said Elie Akilian, chief executive of KingsIsle

Wizard101 is a spell-casting adventure and card-style game.  The game has family focused play style (lining up perfectly between parents and teens), a chat system with a number of options and a character name selector.  The game contains no blood, and characters do not die if defeated in a duel of spells – they are simply returned to a safe area to regain health.

In a recent interview with Dean Takahashi at VentureBeat, Akilian said that the teen niche hasn’t been well served by the game industry.  He points out that games such as World of Warcraft feature plenty of blood and gore, where players can run rampant, while on the opposite side of the spectrum, there are other games with much tighter controls, Disney’s Club Penguin for example.  Wizard101 is rated for everyone 10 and old, and KindsIsle has seen a number of families playing together.  The switch to a flexible pricing model shout increase not only the number of teens playing, but also the number of overall players.

Wizard101 currently features approximately 300 hours of playtime in four worlds.  KingsIsle plans on expanding this content over time.  The game currently features 170 different spell combinations, but has limited pvp combat; presumably do to the kid/family friendly rating.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in industry news | 4 Comments »

 

How microtransactions have the potential to generate more revenue than subscriptions

Wednesday, October 8th, 2008

The world of online gaming has come a long way since it’s early inception.  We’ve all read articles in the New York Times, Cnet, and VentureBeat, but when Dan Miller, a Senior Economist on the Joint Economic Committee in the U.S. Congress writes up an article regarding free-to-play vs. subscription based fees, I for one sit up and listen.

Dan wrote an outstanding take on RMT (Real Money Transactions) vs. Subscription models last week.  Thankfully, this guy (probably) spends more time reading Law papers than most of us, and happened upon a paper written by Richard S. Eisert and S. Gregory Boyd titled “Virtual Property – Business Models and Pitfalls”.  It originally appeared in the September 2008 issue of The Metropolitan Corporate Counsel.  Both Eisert and Boyd are attorneys at Davis & Gilbert LLP.

Miller is quick to point out that a large majority of the paper is centered around (virtual) property rights issues, Eisert and Boyd make a few statements that are HIGHLY note worthy in the free-to-play/microtransaction industry:

“… traditional subscription models and even advertising are relatively blunt instruments for monetizing online worlds. Both of these methods tend to assign the same value to every customer. A subscription charges a customer a monthly or annual cost and advertising pays per user or per view at a set cost. But, people do not value goods this way. Each person places a different value or ‘willingness to pay’ to be a part of an online community. RMT helps companies extract that value.” (emphasis added)

They then continue on to explain the benefits of RMT if used correctly:

“… RMT allows game companies to satisfy that need and extract appropriate value as well by ‘fine tuning’ the price point so that each user pays the price the service is worth to him individually.”

Doing what he does best, Miller went on to break it down in everyday terms that not just an economist can understand.  He’s prepared two graphs for us illustrating a player’s willingness to pay.  Based on a flat rate subscription plan, this graph makes it clear to see that subscription based plans are losing money, quite literally, on both ends.  Miller charts out two unique types of players: Those that simply find the game (subscription) far too costly, and those that are willing to pay even more to enjoy their gaming experience.

This second graph shows the same willingness to pay curve, but cuts the flat rate out revealing an increasing scale of willingness to play AND revenue across the board.

Dan does carry on in the comments section of this article concluding that the graphs are meant only as a picture perfect world hypothetical situation.  It’s a duly noted fact that the willingness to pay curve will actually have a much steeper curve at the left side, as there is bound to be a large percentage of players that are simply unwilling to pay a cent, and therefore using up resources without paying for them, making those that do pay cover the costs for all.

In pure economic theory, these graphs make a clear cut case for free-to-play games supported by microtransactions.  Granted, you’ve got to take into account 1001 variables, but at it’s heart, I believe Miller’s principles to be sound and make a solid case for microtransaction based gaming.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in industry news | No Comments »

 

Are micro transactions on the horizon for Xbox avatars?

Sunday, August 3rd, 2008

Microsoft corporate Vice President John Schappert recently spoke with Venturebeat’s Dean Takahashi on a number of topics including a micro transaction based model for Xbox avatars.

The Microsoft avatar system was announced at E3, and one thing was clear: There’s a lot of potential for micro transactions in the Microsoft future.  With the recent interview, Schappert puts the official stamp on the ‘It’s something we’re seriously considering’ rumor.

“That may be in the future,” Schappert said when asked about the prospect. “In the near term, we want to launch these with great customization and a great library of accessories this fall. I think there is a lot more we can do with them. You will see us continue to add experiences that make use of the avatar.”

“To me, avatars are a logical extension to give us countless ways to personalize our own styles,” he said.  “It’s not like we are using avatars to recreate the perfect human body. And it’s not too cutesy. It’s in the middle. It dresses up the core first-person shooter, who can be edgy. And the more casual player can dress up to look friendly.”

If this sounds more than familiar, just have a think for a second about the Nintendo version: Mii’s.

“I have to make a shout out to the Miis and say that Nintendo did a phenomenal job integrating them into the Wii games,” Schappert said. “There was a lot of inspiration from them. At the same time, it’s a logical evolution of our gamertags on Xbox Live. It was a question of when to introduce it.”

It’s good to see that Microsoft isn’t just doing a bit of chest beating, but giving a nod to the Nintendo boys for beating them to the market.  Whether these custom, micro transaction based avatars will cost an unruly amount of Microsoft Points is yet to be seen.

Micro transactions for in game avatar customization; good or bad?  While the topic can and most certainly will rage on in forums, blogs, and chat channels, isn’t it simply a case of two different types of gamers?  Will the ‘hardcore’ category yet again be the most vocal in it’s opposition, while the ‘casual gamer’ category silently goes about it’s business, dropping a buck here and there to truly customize and enjoy their in game toon?  Clearly the market has shown growth in the micro transaction field, both in interest and development.  With Microsoft putting more resources into developing a program, isn’t this a clear stamp of approval?

Zemanta Pixie

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in industry news | No Comments »