SCEA Home Top Ten Items For October
Information courtesy of GlassWalls; commentary provided by NorseGamer
Virtual commodities are a major component of the economic engine that fuels Home. In discerning sales trends both from raw data as well as consumer feedback, developers can gear their future product deployments accordingly. The community, of course, votes with its wallet — and it’s important for us to see what those wallets are voting for.
Example. I can’t stand the Twilight series. It’s the cloaca of popular fiction. I shake my head in dismay at the sales figures and wonder, like Bill Hicks, if there really is that much babysitting money floating around America.
Here’s the sad truth, though: enough people are willing to spend enough money on sparkly vampire crap that it’s spawning an entire knockoff sub-genre. Because humans respond to economic incentive. It’s no different than how the fantasy genre has been bogged down by Tolkien knock-offs, churned out by barely literate hacks out to make a quick buck. I’m pretty sure that the ghost of Chrétien de Troyes is indulging in a double-facepalm these days.
Likewise, in Home, I can’t believe some of the stuff that people are buying. But, then, there are times when I feel like Gore Vidal in the middle of a You Can’t Do That On Television episode. So let’s just move on and take a look at the data.
Right. On with the analysis, then.
1. The Green Ticket.
Mass Media continues to dominate the sales charts with its Midway games. What’s particularly interesting is that I don’t see other major Home games with the same sort of longevity on the chart. Sodium2, Novus Prime, Conspiracy and Dragon’s Green are all conspicuously absent, for instance (and I would argue that all of those aforementioned games are vastly superior experiences). What is it about Midway’s carnival games that keeps people buying more and more tickets? Better virtual rewards? Simpler gameplay? More appeal to new users? Or perhaps the games are more difficult? I’m genuinely curious as to why the Green Ticket has basically dominated 2011 as the most-sold commodity in Home.
2. Lockwood tokens. 
The gift machine that keeps on giving. What is it about us, as a society, that we love giving gifts to other people and in fact will spend more money on others than we might on ourselves? HomeStation is a huge fan of the Gift Machine concept — I’m still rather amazed that other developers haven’t really caught on to how lucrative this sort of social commodity can be — and since Lockwood continues to develop new content exclusively for it, I think it’s safe to say that we’ll continue to see it do well on the charts. I’ll wager that the 480-token pack is likely due to those exclusive MechJets that they introduced to the Gift Machine as well.
3. Cutteridge is a hit.
Did anyone not expect to see this on the chart? Juggernaut’s opening salvo — a haunted house released right before Halloween — was the equivalent of a time-on-target enfilade through the ranks of the Home community. At seven dollars a pop, it also generated quite a healthy return. The big question, of course, is whether or not it has staying power. Holiday-themed estates might not have the same kind of evergreen shelf life the way something like a Mansion does, and even though a haunted house is a bit less susceptible to that than something like the Winter Vacation Villa, it still poses an interesting question as to whether or not we’ll see the Cutteridge Estate atop the November list.
4. Male versus female clothing. 
The witch and warlock sales are fairly obvious, as is the dark sorceress outfit, given Halloween. I find it interesting that male clothing outsold female clothing by number of units, but it’s a hoodie versus an entire bundle. What’s interesting is that if you take out the holiday-themed costumes, virtual clothing is barely present on the list. Is that simply because there wasn’t anything decent for sale last month, or is it a sign that the repeat spenders in Home are getting stingier with their wardrobe purchases? Granted that peacoat is a pretty awesome commodity, and it was free, so I wonder if that actually hurt clothing sales last month.
5. Get to the choppa!
The Mansion is nowhere to be found on this list. Neither is the Winter Vacation Villa. But the Tycoon Penthouse made the cut, despite the controversy over the helicopter (personally, I rather like it). Is this a sign that Home users like the idea of more posh and elegant virtual estates, or is the penthouse simply the flavor of the month?
6. Kittehs. 
There’s something irresistible about that Pet Tiger Companion, isn’t there? Everyone seems to own that thing. Virtual companions seem to be big, big business in Home, and I’m personally curious as to some of the motivations behind owning these things. In my case, the only companion that I own is a Lockwood kitten, just because I’m a cat enthusiast in real life and I liked the idea of a cute bundle of fur running around my virtual log cabin. What are some of the reasons why you chose to purchase your companions?
November 16th, 2011 by NorseGamer | 5 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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Oh dear, Norse. I own over 20 companions! What can I say, I’m a sucker for them. The cute ones, especially.
I just love those cute kittens!!!!
I, for one, am very happy to see the Cutteridge Estate on the list. I bought this on day one, and it’s become one of my favorite personal spaces. Sure you get a nifty reward -- but its the place itself which keeps me comming back. The amazing attention to detail (have you taken a good look at the wallpaper), the occasional ghost sightings, intermittent rainfall, the sheer size of the place, and the gloomy ambiance just keeps me comming back for more. Add to this that Juggernaut games mantioned something about future upgrades on thier Facebook page, and we just may have something which is not only good at first blush but may also have some endurance on the sales charts. A very good entrance into the Home market indeed.
Just did a little bit of math for fun here. Assuming that the average virtual commodity realizes about five-thousand transactions, and a real megahit might be about twenty-thousand transactions, that means that the cumulative total of gross revenue generated by this list is probably somewhere in the neighborhood of $200,000 or so. Granted, I skewed conservatively, and without concrete data it’s just guesswork on my part, but it means that Home might be raking in about $2.5M to $4M annually off of microtransactions.
Hence why something like the Mansion or the Gold Suit bundle can really skew the numbers. I doubt the price has a huge impact on the number of transactions, and it generates a lot more revenue per user.
I’m sure there are other revenue streams in Home, but it’s worth thinking about just how much (or, more accurately perhaps, how little) money is actually being netted from this channel.
Interesting numbers…I just hope they arent really that low. At 4 mil a year, once you take out the overhead, that’s not really much of a profit margin…more so for a mega corperation like Sony. Unless, of course, they are looking at Home as a mechinism for in house advertisment, then any profit is simply gravy.