Users are global and access to content should be ubiquitous across all platforms. Developers need a single, unified, billing system to cover all devices and monetize users globally. In this article, we summarize four key players in this monetization solution space as relates to multi-platform billing.
Day 2 of the Virtual Goods Summit started with executives from some of the largest free-to-play companies in the world discussing the importance of virtual goods.
Atul Bagga from ThinkEquity moderated the session and kicked off the panel by discussing how the per capita gaming spend in China is 50% higher than the US spend. If you look at the models, it’s pay to play in the USA and free to play in China, and Korea is a mix of both.
BigPoint CTO Jan Wergin explained that they opened a new SF market and feels that America is growing rapidly, and that their model of developing $200K games and determine whether it catches on or not, and if so, continue to add content. He pointed out how the virtual goods model properly adapts itself to gamers’ wallets: players can pay $1 or $100 depending on their budget and enjoyment. This is in contrast to the subscription model, where you put all users in one bucket, even though they’re not. He talked about how their psychological profiles found that European gamers tend to be a little “more strategic” than other gamers, and that means their game style should adapt.
Nexon CEO Daniel Kim explained how at this point, US revenues are still only 10% of their total revenues, but they’re seeing the US market expand rapidly as players adopt the free-to-play model.
Alan Chen, CEO of Perfect World USA, thought that the future is a unified type of ‘console’ or game playing system. That’s why they are aggressively pursuing browser-based games, and he believes that free-to-play is the natural extension. A free to play game is a service, and by its nature emphasizes user feedback to iterate on their games based on user feedback, and Alan felt that will always prevail over standard games.
Jan made an interesting point about customizing your game for the various locales, and one thing he found with BigPoint was that Americans tend to buy more shields and Europeans buy more swords, first. So they adjust their game markets to represent that.
Key Numbers:
Trip Hawkins, CEO of social/mobile game company Digital Chocolate and the founder of gaming behemoth Electronic Arts, kicked off the Virtual Goods Summit this morning by discussing fantasy leagues, Facebook game monetization and the world market for these goods.
Virtual goods have slowly begun making their way into mainstream society. Target today is announcing that it will be carrying Facebook Credits gift cards nationwide, making it the first brick-and-mortar retailer to do so. With the virtual goods industry blooming, both Facebook and Target expect these cards to become hits as gifts. More after the jump.
When Social Times spoke with Gurbaksh Chahal, Founder and CEO of gWallet, in February, he told us, “We have always been an advertising company, we will always be an advertising company.” Today’s announcement of an advisory board of marketing executives to help direct gWallet’s strategy strengthens that message to the industry as the company continues to feint and jab its way through the rapidly changing social media monetization landscape. Read more
While the uninitiated may think of virtual worlds as an escape from real-life, the effects that virtual worlds have on our selves and the world around us beg to differ. There are many ways that virtual worlds impact the real world, but one of the most profound is through awareness and fundraising campaigns. Charities and non-profits have a growing presence in virtual worlds, often teaming up with the creators to run world-wide events to raise real money for a good cause. The reach that a charity can have on a virtual network as opposed to real-world is wide, and often results in more impact for less money. Here are five successful examples of non-profits that have made a real-life difference while raising awareness and money on virtual worlds.
RealNetworks’ game division GameHouse today announced it’s partnering with microtransaction service Live Gamer to provide the virtual economy backend for GameHouse’s new Fusion cross-platform social gaming service (which Neil wrote about last May.) This means Live Gamer will handle virtual currency and item transactions for Fusion’s massive game library, and the move will also bolster its position as a major player in gaming’s next generation.
Read more
Lolapps, one of the top game makers on Facebook with 50 million users, King.com and few other application publishers have recently joined up with SponsorPay to leverage their virtual currency monetization platform. Lolapps alone has over 50 million active users a month and King.com has 15 million monthly active users. This is a great move into the Americas for the European-based SponsorPay, who last month raised $3.8M Euros and predicted they would work with 50% of US Publishers.
hi5 announced today that they have raised $14 million in venture financing from Crosslink Capital. This is the 2nd round of financing for hi5 after their round of $20 million in July 2007. The new round of funding is meant to accelerate hi5′s expansion into social gaming and virtual goods. After their previous round of funding, hi5 made some big moves by introducing the hi5 Coins virtual currency, a virtual gifts store, the hi5 Games channel and most recently animated avatars. What will they be doing with this new round?
Rixty is a great service where you drop change in a something resembling an Arcade cabinet, and the money goes towards virtual currency and virtual goods for online games. Staying true to their commitment to simplifying the virtual currency process, they’ve announced that thousands of ‘CoinStar’ machines around the country will now accept spare change and convert it to Facebook Credits. I take a look at how this is a cool new feature that young game players will use more often as time passes.
