SCEA Top Ten Home Items For December
Information courtesy of GlassWalls, with analysis provided by NorseGamer
So here’s a question: in 2011, how soon did you notice the Christmas decorations popping up in commercial outlets?
In traditional retail, the onset of the holiday season is critical to meeting yearly budgets. December is a huge, huge month of commerce. Back around the solstice, Terra and I made the mistake of stopping by my local mall on the way home — I figured, hey, a quick Starbucks pit stop was in order, and I’m a sucker for a venti peppermint mocha frappuccino, with whipped cream and chocolate syrup — and the closest parking spot we could find was located somewhere in the vicinity of Nova Scotia.
Keep in mind that I live on a rock in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. We don’t have crowds. We have single-carriageway roads with cows and chickens. So it was a bit jarring to see the mall absolutely packed. But that’s the holiday shopping season for ya. Packed. If Ronald Colman had made the mistake of questing over the Himalayas to find Shangri-La in December, he would have found Father Perrault himself endorsing the McDonald’s golden arches.
Is it much the same trend in virtual reality? It’s not too frequent that commodities disappear from the Home catalogue, and prices don’t sharply discount on December 26th, so I wonder if there’s an uptick in number of units sold during the month of December. Of course, Sony wasn’t exactly subtle about the “go shop” message, materializing us in the middle of the mall.
As an aside, to those of you filling your Pampers with beef stew over Home materializing us somewhere: chill. It’s mildly inconvenient, sure, because you have to go to your Navigator and whisk yourself somewhere else, but it’s not some human rights violation that demands a binding resolution from the United Nations. Put Kofi Annan away.
I was genuinely curious to know who took the top honors in Home during the busiest retail month of the year. Here are the results:
There are some interesting results here. As always, let’s dive into the analysis.
1. Unsurprisingly, the Lockwood Gift Machine takes top honors and chews up two slots in the top ten. Christmas is all about gift-giving, and I think we all fully expected to see this atop the list. So much time has passed for Lockwood to establish its dominance in this specialty niche of Home’s e-commerce that it’s going to make copycat efforts harder to pull off.
2. I really don’t like either Midway space — carnivals in general turn me off — but you’ve got to hand it to Mass Media for coming up with a commodity which is almost certainly the bestseller of 2011: the Green Ticket. I’m genuinely curious when people are going to tire of the Midway games; they have a remarkable level of staying power, particularly when contrasted to superior gaming experiences from Hellfire Games and Lockwood. Perhaps the new 2012 casino space will put a dent in the Green Ticket’s sales?
3. Is anyone surprised to see two Lockwood estates on the list? The Dream Yacht was voted the best personal apartment of 2011 in the AlphaZone4 awards, and Lockwood’s marketing strategy with the Midnight Glade was utterly brilliant: offer a commodity which can be used in any estate, and get a free estate to go with it! It doesn’t hurt that the Midnight Glade is quite a unique experience to boot. Of particular note, neither of these commodities is particularly cheap — the Dream Yacht is ten bucks, and the Ultimate Animated Fireworks Pack isn’t a freebie either — so I’ll wager that between the estates and the Gift Machine tokens, Lockwood seriously cleaned up during the holiday season. Here’s HSM’s look at the Dream Yacht, in case you missed it:
4. I suppose I should say something interesting about the 100 Items Super Bundle, given its high placement on the list, but I’m just rather nonplussed about it. Anyone want to offer any commentary?
5. It was practically a guarantee that the Desert Haven Clubhouse was going to be on the list. After three years of Basic Clubhouse, and the Home community shouting for improved clubhouse functionality louder than a pack of football hooligans at a Manchester United game, the first new clubhouse out the gate was going to be a surefire hit. I actually don’t like the Desert Haven clubhouse — I’m not a fan of the Palm Desert setting, and the cheesy “mafia” marketing turned me off in a big way — but the important thing is that the floodgates are starting to open. If the Home community needed any further proof that developers do listen, here it is.
6. Only one standalone article of clothing on the list — and it’s male! Stop the presses, I think the Earth’s poles just reversed! Did some of Home’s more prominent cross-dressers decide to secretly adorn their male identities for a change? Was there just nothing particularly appealing released in December? Or was the discretionary income going toward more expensive items, such as estates?
7. Why is it that the Hollywood Hills House keeps outselling the Amaterasu Yacht? Differences in EOD content? More aesthetically appealing space?
8. While we’re on the subject of LOOT: on one hand, I’m thrilled to see the Space Apartment on the list. On the other hand, why the hell is it on the bottom? A very strong case can be made that the LOOT Space Apartment is the single most valuable personal estate ever released in Home, packed with Twitter feeds, Flickr API picture frames, multiple EOD hotspots, and interactive elements (such as the retractable roof) that offer a lot of visual sizzle. The Sony forum rages with debates over the “value” of virtual commodities, but I don’t think anyone can argue that the Space Apartment justifies its own price tag. If anything, it’s downright cheap. My only guess as to what might have hurt its sales: the fact that Crackle and RadioIO were enabled for all EOD screens (including existing LOOT estates) rather than exclusively for the Space Apartment.
Do not displease Terra.
I will say this again, though: buy the LOOT Space Apartment. Buy it or your parents will disown you, your girlfriend will dump you, your pet kitty will vomit in your shoes, your teachers will flunk you, you will lose your job and end up earning minimum wage at Wetzel’s Pretzels, your backwards-compatible PS3 will break, popular restaurants will refuse you service, baby seals in the Arctic will point at you and say “LOL noob,” you will be featured during the SuperBowl halftime show as America’s biggest idiot, and Wilford Brimley will sternly lecture you.
Oh, and Terra will be displeased.
You don’t want to displease Terra.
So now then. What will 2012 bring us? It’s obviously off to a fantastic start, but a year from now, which developers will we be saluting as having had the biggest impact on Home? As the year begins, the holy trinity is Lockwood, nDreams and LOOT; we can certainly expect to see more fantastic commodities and services offered by them, and I wonder who else might just surprise us this year. Only time will tell.
January 10th, 2012 by NorseGamer | 4 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’ve bought 7 of the items in this month’s top 10 list, 4 of those were actually purchased this month, and an 8th item is high on my want list. NONE of those items are Loot’s Space Apartment. That and the (male) earrings are the 2 items on the list that I have no interest in buying.
Although I use Twitter and Flickr, and the Space Apartment roof is pretty cool, the layout and aesthetic just don’t appeal to me. I love to decorate, and I just don’t see great potential in decorating THAT. You can’t watch the EOD on the top deck while using the seats that dangle off the edge. The Flickr frames on the main level are awesome, but eat away at functional wall space. The bottom is basically a maze of pools and don’t even get me started of the tri-level spiral staircase smack in the middle of it all.
I own and (really, reeeally) love the Hollywood Hills House, and will have to content myself with EOD there until Loot integrates Twitter and Flickr into a prettier, better laid out space. Since you mentioned it, I’m not in love with the Amaterasu/Sunset Yacht and I haven’t purchased that either. I did buy the other 2 yachts available, Santorini Yacht and Lockwood Dream Yacht though, so it’s not like I have anything personal against yachts. The day/night cycles and marine life were awesome and the EOD there offered more content than the Hollywood Hills House, but the design of the Sunset Yacht space itself was…underwhelming. It’s smaller and has less functional “living space” than the Santorini Yacht and the neon lights just aren’t to everyone’s taste.
I see potential for 100s of decorating ideas in almost everything, so I have to really dislike a space for it to not even make my wish list. At the risk of angering our beloved Terra, I just don’t like the Loot Space Apartment.
The Cheekster LOVES Sci Fi..Star Trek, Star Wars, BattleStar Galactica (The 1978 / 1980 Show..not the dark / depressing remake) The Loot Space apartment would be perfect!..Bring on a working Star Trek Bridge apartment or even a full on Millennium Falcon for Star Wars Nuts on home and we would go nuts.. (A mini space dogfight game shooting waves of Tie fighters just like they had at the WarHawk apartment would rock)
The Gift machine.. was that a simple design or marketing GENIUS behind Lockwood?..and its a serious message to how things can be sold now.. give us the option to BUY stuff as a gift generally?.. it just makes sense!
Im really not one for ring dropped in the middle of a crowded place when i rez..
(I mean LOAD..) I don’t like being lagged out way before i even get onto Home. But i do understand the incentive, tho obvious as it is..
Oh, I wouldn’t want to go all out ‘Terracidal’ and upset Terra.. (Have YOU guys seen the size of that bullwhip she carries?..)
The Loot Space Apartment does Rock the Casbah! They did an awesome job on the space, some turrets would have been nice Cheekster. I am totally happy with it though. I hope buyers get as much enjoyment out of it as I have.
How can I not buy stuff from LOOT who are not coming to Asia in the first place!?