SCEA Home Top Ten Items For September
Information courtesy of GlassWalls; commentary by NorseGamer
What drives your consumer spending? What motivates you to whip out the wallet?
Discerning the buying trends of Home’s nascent population is, I imagine, quite a challenge. Consider it: over the last year, you’ve got a tremendous population explosion of new users, all of whom have access to a significantly greater back catalogue of virtual commodities to choose from. At the same time, you’ve also got a lot more content coming out for Home every week now; in an increasingly crowded marketplace, there’s the risk of something falling through the cracks and going unnoticed.
Thus, it becomes increasingly important for content developers to try to divine buying habits from sales data. Behavioral economics is as much art as it is science, and a good developer has to not just figure out what the community is looking for at the moment, but try to anticipate where the market will be one or two fiscal quarters from now.
Anticipating what people want before they realize it, and then selling them something they wanted without knowing it, is by no means easy. In the video game industry, this is why we see an increasing amount of revenue being generated by a shrinking number of titles: because when the stakes get high, the natural tendency is to play things safe.
What I love about Home’s marketplace, personally, is that there’s a wonderfully wild take-a-chance mentality (or at least the public perception thereof) towards product development. Sure, you see the emergence of trends — the diamond suit following on the heels of the gold suit’s success, or the lengthy trend towards ever more salacious female clothing (which seems to have somewhat abated for now) — but there’s still a remarkable variety of different products all competing for the spotlight.
For the month of September, here are the top ten virtual commodities (by number of units sold) in SCEA Home:
An analysis of this data reveals some interesting trends — and some surprises.
1. Once again, we see perennial favorites in the top two slots. Mass Media’s Green Ticket and the Lockwood Token Pack both show no signs of slowing down. Indeed, these two were atop our February list, which in Home terms is an eternity ago. Back then, it was observed that those two commodities are both wild cards; purchasing them leads to a myriad of different items which can’t be acquired by any other means. And, further, some items in the Lockwood Gift Machine require more than 80 tokens to acquire, which also contributes to sales volume.
2. While we may wonder about the logic of releasing the Winter Vacation Villa in the middle of summer, perhaps the desire for drought relief helped fuel sales? I’m quite fond of the Winter Vacation Villa myself, and I’m glad to see it doing well. Of particular note, both the Winter Vacation Villa and the Tycoon Penthouse have elements which link directly to the Mansion; did this help boost Mansion sales, or has the Mansion more or less had its time in the spotlight? And what do we think of having bonus elements in one estate which only function if you own another estate? (I quite like the interconnection concept, personally, and I don’t even care for the Mansion.)
3. Good lord, that Pet Tiger Companion is everywhere, isn’t it? I’m starting to wonder if the companion’s size makes a difference; it seems that one of the primary motivations behind owning a companion is to show it off in public, and the animations of the smaller companions may be more difficult to see. Out of curiosity, I wonder which group of companions, as a whole, sells better: the more “natural” ones (cats and dogs, for instance), or the more whimsical ones such as Thing In A Box or the Novus Prime mini-mech?
4. Stop the presses: did male clothing items outsell female clothing items? What what what? Were there just no decent female clothing items released last month, or is this a sign of less cross-dressing in Home?
5. I wonder if the Konami corset has special animations if you press up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, triangle, circle, Start…
6. SCEA sure cleaned up last month, didn’t they? Gone are the days when one could reasonably stay on top of all the new virtual commodities coming out every week. Nowadays, unless your name happens to be Cubehouse, there’s just no way to keep track of it all. Oh, and it’s good to see VEEMEE on the list! We like VEEMEE. Go support these guys and buy a London Pub already.
October 18th, 2011 by NorseGamer | 8 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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I knew White Bengal cub would be a top seller. How could you resist.
#4 -- That makes me wonder as well. Either that, or has the male population of Home actually is ponying up and stepping away from the default black wife-beater and droopy cargo pants?
That “default black wife-beater and droopy cargo pants?” remark leaves me mystified. Is that a snotty “welcome noobie” remark or am I misunderstanding something. It just don’t sound right at all no way I read it. I’m sorry about that.
In RL and Home I like cargo pants.
Well, Terra’s certainly more than capable of speaking for herself, but I wouldn’t take it as a personal slight; it has more to do with the fact that women’s apparel consistently outsells men’s apparel (if the top-ten lists are any indicator), and as Home’s population is overwhelmingly male, there’s no shortage of men running around in default clothing, which I believe the wife-beater and the cargo pants are a part of.
Someone who voluntarily chooses to wear such clothing in Home does run the risk of being prejudged as a noob — there have been any number of articles in HSM and elsewhere addressing this social trend — but we’re also the first to caution against judging a book by its cover. More accurately, I think it’s a comment on the general resistance to spending money in Home on *any*thing, including virtual apparel.
In using search I can see I took the term “wife-beater” the wrong way. I will apologize for that. I do wonder how many others may have thought the same way.
I will continue to happily wear my cargo pants when I feel like it.
As for the “wife-beater” top whatever it is, I may wear it but I won’t call it that.
Cheers!
Funny how colloquialisms can change everything, including a simple conversation about virtual clothing, eh?
The main observation I was making is that it appears male users in Home appear to be spending more these days in general than they have in months past, not the appearance of the actual clothing items themselves -- default or otherwise.
Is it because before they would have rather spent that money on DLC for their favorite game and thought Home was a waste of time? Is it because Mom and Dad finally relented and got them a $20 PSN card (and maybe a keyboard)? Did the 100 free items that Sony gave Home users after the outage actually appeal to those of the predominately male user base who heretofore were dead set against buying Home items, and tempted them to spend? Are developers simply producing more male clothing items that are actually more appealing to guys? Or is it even perhaps because they took a chance and spent some money on an in-Home game (Salt Shooter, the Midway, upgrades for Sodium 2, what have you), saw their peers dressing “up” or even perhaps got caught up (by “accident”) in Home’s social scene and actually started to like hanging out in Home, therefore feeling the need to upgrade the wardrobe? This is the stuff I’m really curious to know.
Hey, in real life, I’m a jeans and a T-shirt girl (although living in New England, I can’t wear them year round without the risk of frostbite)- pretty boring, pretty plain.
With the variety that’s out there in Home though, my imagination would be rather quite disappointed in me if I stayed the same old, same old. That said, you will never see me in the fashion threads, both here and on the Sony forum. Being a “fashionista” just is not my scene.
And as a domestic abuse survivor, I completely get where you’re coming from, and I thank you.
I think it’s cool you are able to get this data. I find it interesting. I’m sure u can do sum interesting trend analysis with all that data.
I got that gothic corset (and not the other parts of the outfit) and love it. i got a real life top that looks kind of like it too. and what is up with #4? especially with all the great content that has been comin out for us for the past couple of month. Wait until the numbers come out for October. I bet Granzella gonna be all ova it with all their hott beach wear!
No suprise that the Villa furniture bundle made the list. You get a decent amount of items for five bucks. Bundles are a good thing, and I’m happy to see them becomming more of a staple than an afterthought.
Love the sales chart articles…keep ‘em comming.