The online gaming industry sells $2 billion a year in virtual goods through micro-transactions. What if they sold newspapers?

Today, CNN’s Fortune Magazine published an article titled, How Mafia Wars Will Fix Media By John Patrick Pullen which focused on the booming business of the free-2-play and micro-transaction based business model and how that model could be applied to traditional media like the New York Times.

Live Gamer provides the leading enterprise-grade monetization platform for games, social networks, toys, and digital entertainment properties.  Although this type of model has yet to be applied to the publishing industry – it is in fact a viable model that could revolutionize the way traditional newspapers and magazines do business if they offer exclusive content that is compelling to their viewer base.

Live Gamer sees average revenue per paying user across all its titles is $28 per month across 85+ million users worldwide. Comparatively  speaking an average of 15.7 million users per month visit the New York Times‘, where they have free access to content. Only fewer than 1 million readers choose to subscribe at $20 a month. Pullen suggests (and we couldn’t agree more) that publishers need to tap into this competitive nature and other game-like experiences that are driving the gaming industry today in order to encourage free-model readers to pay for content they find vital.

Read the entire article here

Contact us to learn how you can apply micro-transactions and the free-to-play business model to your IP

Sony, Warner Bros. Drop Subscription Fees and Move into Selling Virtual Goods

Today, the Wall Street Journal published an article titled, First, Give Away the Game which focused on the growing adoption of the free-to-play business model in the Western market with major companies like Sony and Warner Bros. The model not only removes barriers to entry for gamers, but also provides them with the ability to self-select into an optimal price point resulting in a compelling high-margin business for game publishers and developers.

Sony plans to release a F2P version of “Everquest II” and Warner plans to release “Lord of the Rings Online” by the fall abandoning a $15 dollar a month subscription fee. Players will now buy virtual goods and items upgrades incrementally through micro-transactions.

Although the price point on many virtual items often seem small—$1 or $2 for many items— publishers are discovering they can really add up. Across the 145+ titles we power e-commerce for we see an average of 10% of players purchasing virtual goods spending at an average of $28 a month. “There’s no cap on what the user will spend on micro-transactions, unlike a traditional subscription model,” says Andrew Schneider, Live Gamer’s president and co-founder.

This published story follows last week announcements of new partnerships with EA, THQ, and Real Networks’ Gamehouse only solidifying that major Western publishers and IP holders are rapidly adopting this model. Total virtual goods sales this year are expected to reach $1.7 billion in the U.S., up from $278 million in 2008, according to ThinkEquity LLC.

Contact us to learn how Live Gamer can help accelerate your micro-transaction strategy.

To read the Wall Street Journal article in full click here

Electronic Arts, Inc. has selected Live Gamer to drive its global micro-transactions-based projects and accelerate the company’s online gaming strategy. EA will integrate our enterprise grade Element’s platform to its global IT systems to augment existing ecommerce capabilities for EA studios worldwide.

Live Gamer Elements offers EA a breadth of new payment gateways, advanced virtual goods merchandising functionality, deep analytics capabilities, virtual item gifting, support for fictional (earned in-game) currencies, item storefronts, robust catalog management, cash-in flows and much more.

This exciting announcement follows last week’s news of partnerships with THQ and Real Networks’ GameHouse. Please read our latest press announcement or contact us to learn how to monetize your business through virtual goods and micro-transactions.

Read Forbes Coverage

Read VentureBeat’s Coverage

Live Gamer’s Advanced Commerce Solution Offers Scalable, Cross-Platform Monetization Across the GameHouse Social Gaming Platform

At Casual Connect in Seattle we announced that Real Networks selected Live Gamer to power Gamehouse Fusion virtual economy. The announcement followed a few days after news of our THQ partnership.

Gamehouse Fusion is a social gaming platform with thousands of socially connected games across mobile, social networks, and scales hundreds of millions of players. With the new agreement Live Gamer’s enterprise-grade platform, Elements will power virtual currency systems, manages complex virtual item catalogs and storefronts, user policy configurations and advanced merchandising on a secure and scalable platform.

“The free-to-play, virtual goods-based business model has proven to significantly increase revenue in social games, but due to GameHouse Fusion’s scope and complexity, it was critical that we integrate a trusted platform that could scale and meet all of our needs,” said Matt Hulett, chief revenue officer of GameHouse. “We chose the Live Gamer platform because of its advanced toolset and track record in the industry.”

“GameHouse has raised the bar for social gaming online and on mobile,” said Andrew Schneider, president and co-founder for Live Gamer. “We look forward to helping optimize GameHouse’s revenue, increase ARPU, and offer its users the best possible microtransaction experience.”

GameHouse Fusion launched in May with support from large media and technology companies, and simultaneously unveiled GameHouse on Facebook, the first application to be built on the Fusion platform.

Today we are pleased to announce that THQ has selected the Live Gamer Elements platform to drive e-commerce solutions and virtual goods monetization across multiple titles for both PC-online and mobile games. Company of Heroes(R) Online, launching later this year in the United States and Canada, will be the first THQ title to integrate Live Gamer’s Elements platform for monetizing its virtual economy. Other scheduled projects include multiple social game titles for Facebook.

“In-game virtual items have become increasingly popular with gamers today, and not only offer them a more immersive experience, but also give game publishers a viable and profitable revenue stream,” said Martin Good, THQ Executive Vice President, Kids, Family, Casual Games, and Global Online Services. “Live Gamer offers the most complete platform for integrating a virtual economy into our games. We view this as a critical component of our complete online game delivery platform for THQ’s growing portfolio of online games.”

The deal marks a major shift with major US gaming publishers who are now embracing the virtual goods business model more than ever. The virtual goods business model allows publishers to offer their games F2P (free-to-play) and players pay real money for virtual goods such as weapons, booster packs, fashion, accessories, etc…

“We’ve watched this industry evolve since its inception and today, virtual economies have become the driving force in the online gaming business. THQ is at the forefront of game development across the globe, and we look forward to helping them grow their business model for years to come, ” said Andrew Schneider, President and Co-Founder, Live Gamer

For more information on Live Gamer, visit www.livegamer.com. To learn more about THQ, visit www.THQ.com.

Female gaming icon and Live Gamer’s Senior Director of Business Development, Stevie Case will speak at a special panel hosted by the Technology Council of Southern California on July 15th. The “How Virtual Goods Are Transforming the Game Industry” panel will focus on the trends and challenges of the Free 2 Play business model and the explosion of virtual goods consumption on Facebook, Smart Phones, and other popular gaming platforms.

Speakers:

• Andre Bremer, Studio CTO at Zynga
• Stevie Case, Senior Director, Business Development at Live Gamer, Inc.
• Jason Kay, Chief Operating Monkey at Monkey Gods LLC
• Brad Spahr, Founder & CEO at Fan Space Media
  (former Exec. Dir. of Digital Distribution, Sony Pictures Entertainment)

Moderator:

• Shalom Mann, Founder & Creative Director at OneLoop Games
  (former SVP & Studio Head, Sony Online Entertainment)

To learn more click here

To register now click here

Live Gamer’s CEO and Co-founder, Mitch Davis will join ThinkTomorrow ~ Today: A Private Company & Venture Capital Summit (TTT) hosted by Think Equity. Mitch will participate on the “Monetizing Generation Y” panel, which will take place on May 11th at 3:15 PM moderated by Atul Bagga.

About Think Tomorrow ~ Today

ThinkTomorrow ~ Today brings together the leaders of the growth economy and offers an opportunity to meet face-to-face with visionary company executives, interact with leading growth strategists and technologists, and witness firsthand the state-of-the-art products and services that will shape the future. In this one-of-a-kind forum, our presenting companies will outline their latest developments while key influencers and industry luminaries debate the future of the growth economy.

To learn more about monetizing the next generation of consumers, please contact us

Live Gamer’s president and co-founder, Andrew Schneider will be joining a social gaming panel at the upcoming Digital Hollywood Conference.  They will discuss the latest trends of social gaming design, distribution, and monetization across online and mobile platforms.

Monday, May 3rd

2:30 PM – 3:30 PM

Track I – DMny-1, HGmz-2, NuVIS-2

Social Gaming: Online and Mobile – Design, Distribution, Virality, Cross-Promotion & Monetization

Michael Pole, Founder, President, Trilogy Studios

Andrew Schneider, Co-founder & President, LiverGamer

Mike Goslin, Vice President Product Development, Hangout, former VP Disney Online

Mikael Gummerus, CEO and founder, Frosmo

Kyle Laughlin, Head of Yahoo! Sports and Yahoo! Games

DreamWorks Animation, tba

Steve Poehlein, Director, Media & Entertainment Solutions, Hewlett-Packard, Moderator

To schedule a meeting with Live Gamer, contact us

Join Live Gamer’s Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President of Product, Bill Grosso for two exciting sessions at this year’s Login Conference.

Optimizing Micro-Transactions (Panel)

This panel will discuss the major elements of pricing, promoting, and integrating micro transactions with the gameplay flow. Speakers include researchers, and execs on the front lines implementing and managing micro transactions.

Moderator: Hugh Bowen, Bowen Research

Panelist: David S. Lee, Sleepy Giant Entertainment, Inc.

Panelist: Bill Grosso, Live Gamer

Panelist: Stephen Kutner, Market Innovations Inc.

Date/Time: Wednesday, May 12, 10:30 AM

Room: Seaport

Learn More

Managing a Virtual Economy

Lecturer: Bill Grosso

Virtual goods are one of the most important monetization tools for many developers today. But before you turn on the virtual machine, you need to understand what makes it tick and how your management tactics can affect your success in the marketplace. In this presentation, Bill goes in depth on the metrics, measurements and levers that developers and executives alike need to understand and master in order to run a successful virtual economy.

Date/Time: Thursday, May 13, 3:30 PM

Room: Salon AB

Learn More

Vili Lehdonvirta, member of Live Gamer’s advisory board and economic sociologist at the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology was recently featured in Newsweek. In an article titled “Why Behavioral Economics Love Online Games” David Lyons explores the booming business of virtual goods in online games like Pet Society, Farmville, Mafia Wars, Eve Online, and much more.

One interesting piece of data that Kristian Segerstrale, CEO of Playfish shares is that the company sells 90 million items a day through its 12 different games.

Lead economist of CCP, Eyjólfur Gudmagnusson is also quoted in the piece regarding his role in Eve’s Online economy. Both Vili Lehdonvirta and Eyjólfur Gudmagnusson recently shared the floor at GDC (Game Developers Conference) during Live Gamer’s VCON 2010 on the panel The New ARPPU Playbook, Cont’t. Dev-onomics: Economics 101 for Game Designers.

View Newsweek Article

Learn more about VCON 2010 presented by Live Gamer