What if Home’s Estates Started At $15, and Clubs Had Monthly Subscription Fees?
by Terra_Cide, HSM Editor-in-Chief
A virtual economy is, to a certain extent, arbitrary.
What’s the value of a t-shirt? What’s the value of a locomotion, or a dance? How about a virtual arcade cabinet?
Well, frankly, that’s all up in the air. The only way to assign a value is through comparison, and you have to have something as a benchmark. In the case of PlayStation Home, that benchmark is the private estate. And, to be brutally honest, Sony hamstrung their own economy by setting estate prices low at the beginning of Home.
Think about it. The original baseline for a Home estate was $4.99 — and it stayed there for quite some time. This was a huge mistake. Why weren’t the first two Home estates — the Summer House and the Log Cabin — priced at fifteen dollars instead?
From a marketing standpoint, this would’ve been completely justifiable: fifteen dollars to own your own private scene in Home, where you get to control who has access, you get to decorate it to your tastes, and you get to have a deeper experience than just a public user. Not only do you get to live inside a video game world, but you get to actually make it your own!
If there is a class distinction between Home’s plebeian citizenry and its whales, it’s private estate ownership. And this class distinction could have — and should have — been sold at a massive markup. By failing to seize on a very basic marketing opportunity, Sony actually did permanent damage to Home’s economy: scenes are, aside from full-blown games, the most expensive type of virtual good to create in Home, and by pricing them at five dollars, that leaves very little wiggle room for other types of commodities to be sold at a price which is sufficient to turn a profit — particularly for third-party developers who have to pay a cut of their revenues to Sony as the platform provider.
I’ll go ahead and say it: it’s not that Home’s economy is overpriced — it’s that it’s finally creeping up into the pricing structure it should’ve had at the beginning. But because it wasn’t set properly up front, the actual revenue gain is less than what it could have been. This, in turn, hurts Home’s ability to attract large third-party promotions and developers, which exerts downward pressure on the idea of keeping Home going.
The other revenue vertical that was overlooked — and in the copy for the Basic Clubhouse it states it’s something which may occur (but never did) — was monthly clubhouse fees. Why on Earth didn’t Sony implement this at the very beginning, or certainly when clubhouse skins were introduced? Club owners are hardcore Home users, and more often than not usually make up part of the whale economy which is so vital to keeping Home going. Just as Lockwood made a considerable amount of money off the gentleman’s Figment suit because it appealed to all those insipid wannabe “fam” bosses, so monthly subscription fees would’ve made clubs a far more attractive market sector for Sony to invest money into.
Of course, it’s too late now to do these things. Home’s almost certainly on the tail end of its run as an application, and trying to implement these changes now would likely not move the needle enough to justify the cost. Had these things been in place at the very beginning of Home, however, its economy would likely be far healthier than it is today, more developers would still be involved with Home as a platform, and there would be almost no complaining from the community — because things would’ve simply always been this way.
HomeStation, despite the size of its audience, has never been the popular darling of the self-entitled crowd on the Sony forum, simply because we refuse to jump on the everything-for-cheap bandwagon — particularly after Sony’s own generosity with how they initially set up Home’s economy has, by and large, hamstrung it. Though it may be too late for Home itself, perhaps the lessons learned in behavioral economics will translate into a better virtual world at some point in the future.
August 13th, 2013 by Terra_Cide | 2 comments
Terra _Cide is the former Community Manager for Lockwood Publishing and Editor Emeritus for HomeStation Magazine.
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I think if Sony implemented the monthly club fee, we would see a lot fewer clubs. I think many club were started because it was a quick and easy way to get a free personal space.
The lack of financial transparency is the culprit I think for all this whining about cost. Without being educated about how Sony and the 3rd parties are doing, people will only see how much they pay for things, and that will always fall on the side of paying too much
As far as the headline goes, maybe if Home ports to the PS4 that just might be a reality!
It could well happen Ted; Home coming to PS4. I’m quite sure it generates a substantial amount of money for those involved, otherwise, what’s the point right?
I can absolutely see where you’re coming from in this article Terra, and I happen to agree that they kinda shot themselves in the foot with their pricing. But as you’ve also pointed out, these things are creeping up to a “healthier” price for those who develop for the application. Just look at that unsightly “Diamond” mansion; it has sold a fair few units I’d imagine, and that in itself is an indication that there are those willing to “invest” (I know, you don’t like that word) a substantial amount into virtual real estates.
If anything this is exactly the indication that says Home WILL be carried over to PS4. Maybe just streamed onto it sure, but then you could log into Home from a PS3 or 4 regardless. It seems, after all, that’s why they moved all our data onto their side -- effectively allowing the end user access to their Home ccontent from anywhere in the world, as long as they could get to a PS3 (or 4?).
The inclusion of IPs like Doctor Who subtly tell me there’s its far from winding down too, and there’s been no holding off of new content and ideas either; I don’t see Home stopping for a good long while to come.
As for the price increase thing well, I’m Scottish, so it’s apparently in my nature to be “stingy” which means obviously I don’t want to see any increases anywhere lol. I’d dump my club and everyone in it in a heartbeat if they started with a monthly fee! Sorry but, it’s just some other spaces to me, I don’t actually have a “club”…