Sony America’s March Top-Ten List
Information courtesy of Home Community Management
For the month of March, here are the top ten items sold (by unit, not by revenue):
- The Green Ticket (Mass Media Inc.)
- Lockwood Token Pack – 80 (Lockwood Publishing)
- PlayStation Home Mansion – Second Floor (Sony Computer Entertainment America)
- Hollywood Hills House with Home Theater (Sony Pictures Entertainment)
- “Aurora Island” (nDreams Ltd.)
- PlayStation Home Mansion — Infinity Pool (Sony Computer Entertainment America)
- PlayStation Home Mansion — First Floor (Sony Computer Entertainment America)
- Animated diamond watch — male (Sony Computer Entertainment America)
- OrbRunner Ultimate Upgrade Bundle (nDreams Ltd.)
- LOOT’s Sunset Yacht with Home Theater (Sony Pictures Entertainment)
Editor’s note: An analysis of this data produces some interesting conclusions.
A. Mass Media evidently has quite a gold mine on their hands with their Midway spaces! We keep seeing the Green Ticket consistently raking in large numbers of transactions every month, which of course encourages other developers to take a similar approach to the marketing and revenue generation of their spaces. Given the constant flow of new users into Home, as well those veterans who simply want to play games for a little while, Mass Media will doubtlessly continue with strong sales for some time to come.
B. As we predicted, regular updates to the Lockwood Gift Machine pay off handsomely with revenue generation. Most people love the idea of giving gifts to their friends, and Outso was immensely clever in capitalizing upon this behavior within Home and exploiting it. I think it’s a foregone conclusion that we will continue to see the Gift Machine on these top ten lists with some regularity.
C. Can anything stop the Mansion? Since the first section’s initial release until today, it just keeps bringing in the sales. People really seem to like the idea of buying a space with two games already “baked in,” so that they can have two more active-item games in the same space as well. Further, with a descending price of entry with each new Mansion purchase, the financial barriers involved in reloading a purchaser decrease with each new section.
D. nDreams has quite a hit on its hands with Aurora! Not only did the OrbRunner goggles sell quite well, but the personal estate threw up some huge numbers. Whether or not the personal estate sold well because of the space’s aesthetic merits or because of its gaming tie-in to the public space, it’s hard to say; either way, we at HSM highly recommend the Aurora experience in general, as it’s one of the more “magic realism” places in Home.
E. People really love their EOD technology. LOOT’s Entertainment On Demand continues to drive sales of the Hollywood Hills House and the Sunset Yacht, and this once again points to the tremendous demand for a more immersive virtual reality experience. If the community’s voice is its wallet, then this doubtlessly tells Sony that one of the keys to a successful private estate in Home might just be to offer something different and unique that other spaces don’t have.
F. We’re predicting, right now, that the Novus Prime personal estate will be on the April list. That’s a safe bet, I think.
April 6th, 2011 by NorseGamer | 6 comments
NorseGamer is the product manager for LOOT Entertainment at Sony Pictures, as well as the founder and publisher of HomeStation Magazine. Born and raised in Silicon Valley, he holds a B.A. in English/Creative Writing from San Francisco State University and presently lives in Los Angeles. All opinions expressed in HSM are solely his and do not necessarily reflect the views of Sony DADC.
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It’s nice to see that the Sunset Yacht and Hollywood Hills spaces are still in the top ten. Those are not new but still very popular. They are both quality items that are relatively well priced.
In my opinion, Mass Media continues to rake in tons of cash because the rewards from the Midway are some of the best items in Home.
uhhuh big ticket items top 10 in number of units sold when do I get to say “I told you so”? The very vocal complainers who protest any item that costs more than 99 cents and any personal space for more than $4.99 have missed the quiet arrival of gamers who have money and are more than willing to spend it to get the experiences they want. And the success of these ‘big ticket’ items will encourage developers to bring out even more. “Why spend all the R&D expense for an item that would have to sell in the hundreds of thousands of units to be worth developing?”; that’s the way any for-profit company thinks.
It depends on units sold. If Home is depending on a few users to pay big money on expensive items, the appeal will quickly run out.
Atlanta, Home is a microcosm of the world’s population. There are old time gamers in here (who go back to the days of the Commodore 64) as well as youngsters sneaking in on their parent’s Home account while the folks are at work. There are some people who have no money to spend while there are people at the other end of the spectrum who have lots of discretionary dollars
There are people (Ralph Nader is a prime example) of people who made a career out of spending as little as possible, going for function rather than fantasy.
And there are others who must have the ‘latest and greatest’. Best analogy I can think of: some people buy the least expensive car they can find. But Mercedes, Lexxus, Jaguar, etc. also keep going on and on because other people want that specific item and can afford to pay for it. The appeal never runs out.
Or, look at jewelry: 200% mark-up on engagement rings -- but people keep buying them. It is not the price, it is the “perceived value”. Most purchases are made based on emotion, not logic. If a $35. Mansion has high emotional appeal to someone, they will buy it if they can possibly afford it. Everyone else can tell them they are crazy, but it won’t matter to them if that purchase makes them feel good. Others will wish they could buy an item they cannot afford. While yet another group will refuse to spend one penny -- they will wait for the ‘free periods’ in Midway because to them their wasted time standing around waiting has no value.
I keep saying, “market segmentation”. With virtual items, Sony can afford to bring out a range of products to appeal to a large number of widely divergent markets in Home. No inventory to store, no distribution systems with shipping costs, breakage, and other corporate manufacturer headaches, and the entire world as a market base. I expect to see them experimenting with even more ‘high-end’ products to see what the parameters of those markets really are.
Now the question becomes, does it cost the developer the same amount of labor costs, materials, research and development, etc. to produce a $4.99 personal space as it does to produce a $14.99 personal space? What kind of ‘value added’ features to throw in to sweeten the deal? If the cost is the same, how many sales does it take before those costs are recovered and the rest is profit? Those are the biggest considerations they have to make as the vendor.
It’s business!
And notice that there are never any t-shirts on the top ten list…