Lightspeed, a venture capital firm, checked out the average revenue per user for some casual, free to play MMOGs (Club Penguin, Habbo Hotel, Runescape, and Second Life), establishing that other that SL – which pulls in a little over $AU 9.58 a month in ARPU, thanks mostly to virtual land upkeep – these sorts of casual MMOGs pull in around $AU 1.33 ARPU per month. Which, until one considers the user bases of games like Club Penguin, seems like a damn hard way to make some money:
The plan was to have a Spore Creature Creator Demo, containing about 25 percent of the full library of creature pieces parts, going out to the public around June 17, around the same time as the full version, which costs $AU 10.63.
Well, a file purporting to be that demo is on Megaupload as we speak. Now, 191 MB is a huge file just to be bogus malware, but still, we assume no responsibility if this isn’t what it says it is or turns out to be something worse.
Spore releases for PC and Mac on Sept. 8, 2008, with a version for the DS on Sept. 7 and another TBA for the Wii.
Spore Creature Creator Demo (.exe) [MegaUpload, thanks Null Void]
Gamasutra has an interesting piece up that celebrates the art of thoughtful thievery — based around the idea that there are “no new ideas,” so picking and choosing your sources wisely can at least lead to interesting new creations. Going off the recent release of the 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons, Tom Smith looks at a couple of areas where game designers could take some lessons:
Wednesday, a UK judge threw out 26 charges against the self-styled “No. 1 name in console modifications,” leaving MrModChips, as Neil Higgs is known, to freely do his business (from his parents’ home.) More broadly, some are hailing the decision as effectively legalising console modifications in Great Britain, six years after a similar decision in Australia.
Via Shacknews late Friday, Atari reported $AU 25.12 million net loss in its fiscal year ending March 31, 2008, the last FY on its books before it starts getting a monthly allowance from Infogrames, and a lecture on the value of money.
The $AU 25.12M loss however is one-third the $AU 74.18 fiscal assbeating Atari took in FY07, precipitating the whole Infogrames merger/buyout/$AU 21.29M loan announced April 30 and taking effect the third quarter of this year. Also, Atari’s loss includes about $AU 6.92 million in corporate restructuring charges. rather than regular business. Still, revenue was about $AU 85.14 million, less than $AU 129.84 million of a year before. So there wasn’t the kind of expenses that go toward publishing crappy games games, but there wasn’t anything to sell either.
Some brands, no matter how sickly they become, can just go on forever because they got in the race early, no matter where they dropped out. Just ask United Press International. Or Ovaltine. So if Atari is shifting to social, casual, whatever you want to call it, that’s probably going after brand of low-awareness game consumer who thinks Atari’s been around forever and will give games under its title a benefit of the doubt that the publisher didn’t earn in the past five years.
Atari Reports 23.6M Loss for FY2008[Shacknews]
