Last week Live Gamer presented VCON 2010, a full day exploration of games-as-a-service and virtual goods. Among the presenters was William Grosso, Live  Gamer’s CTO and SVP of Product  who discussed The New ARPPU Playbook: What Safeway Can Teach Us: Applying Retail Strategies to Item Merchandising.

Bill’s point is simple. In an industry that is moving from subscription-based business models to micro-transactions based businesses driven by virtual item sales, why aren’t we adapting basic retail strategies in our games?

In Bill’s slide presentation he outlines tactics stemming from discounting, promotions, buy-one-get-one-free, and other strategies that are simple and easy to implement (at least, if you’re using Live Gamer Elements), to drive revenue that doesn’t involve changing gameplay.