MapleStory Already Raking in U.S. Dollars
Glitchy points out a short article in the new Business Week about Maple Story, the free side-scrolling MMOG from Korean company Nexon. Two things of interest here: the mag reports that North American players spent $1.6 million in February to buy 600,000 virtual products within MapleStory, so it’s looking like that kind of microtransaction as a revenue stream could work. Also note, however, that in Korea, KartRider, another hugely popular game from Nexon, is seeing concurrency rates that are half what they were two years ago. There’s no English version of KartRider at the moment (though one is coming), so I can’t tell you what that’s down to, but I’d wager it’s an indication Nexon hasn’t kept up with refreshing KartRider’s content as well as it might have. Considering that more and more such casual virtual worlds are soon to hit the market, the indication here is that while there’s certainly an American market for these new revenue models, there will be similar pitfalls to be aware of as well.
Feeds
Korea’s online gaming market seems to be maturing. Games no longer can keep players around for multiple years. A good “run” for an online service is 18 months… if they do well.
So, KartRider is typical.
This could have real repercussions in the US as most MMOs depend on a longer life to become profitable.
I also assume you mean that microtransactions can work in the US. It is certainly proven in Korea, where most of the new games are using the virtual asset purchase model, and China where Shanda has taken its entire line of older games and converted them to this model (with a healthy recent quarter, this strategy looks to be a success).