Please join Live Gamer’s VP of Corporate Development, Nima Pourshasb as he joins the Virtual Currency panel at the “Future of Money and Technology Summit”.
To learn more about the event or to check out the schedule, please visit http://futureofmoney.com/moneyconference/
Join Live Gamer’s Co-founder and CEO, Mitch Davis at the Business Insider’s IGNITION Event as he discusses the impact of Farmville and other casual games on housewives.
3:35pm – December 2, 2010
Time Warner Center, NYC
Join Live Gamer’s Vice President, Corporate Development, Nima Pourshasb at Social Gaming Summit East. He will address current trends and hot topics for monetizing user fan bases of interactive and digital entertainment.
Speaker: Nima Pourshasb
Monetizing Interactive and Digital Entertainment
12/1/2010 – 9:40am
Are you attending Engage! Expo Santa Clara? if so check out Live Gamer’s CTO, Bill Grosso at the Turning Players Into Profits panel. This discussion will touch on successful business models and marketing tactics to raise ARPU, user acquisition, key reporting metrics, freemium vs paid models and using promotions and content to enhance retention.
Event Details:
September 23, 2010 from 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM
Live Gamer speaker: Bill Grosso
Other speakers:
Rob Goldberg, CEO, GMG Entertainment
Chris Carvalho, COO, Kabam
Albert Lai, CEO, Kontagent
THQ launched the Open Beta for Company of Heroes Online which utilizes the Live Gamer Elements platform. Play it today!
http://www.companyofheroes.com/
Check out Bill Grosso’s lecture on “Taking Virtual Economies to the Next Level” at Casual Connect 2010.
Lecture Description: Virtual goods are one of the most important monetization strategies for game developers today. In this presentation, Bill goes in depth on the metrics, measurements, and merchandising secrets that developers and executives alike need to understand and master in order to run a successful virtual economy. An author on economics and a well-known software engineer, Bill melds a rare combination of economic know-how and cutting-edge technology, resulting in monetizaton strategies deeply seeded in market-proven wisdom yet creatively adapted for next-generation gaming.
To watch the video and download presentation materials click here
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
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.
