Blizzard says no to microtransactions business model
Blizzard has given word that it has no plans of implementing microtransactions in their popular MMORPG World of Warcraft. While some would argue that it is another potential source of revenue for the company, the co-founder of Blizzard and senior vice-president of product development Frank Pearce thinks otherwise.
He believes that subscribers will be staying around longer and have a better overall gaming experience if they choose not to implement microtransactions. He went on to elaborate why it wasn’t as profitable as most people would believe:
I would say that that’s arguable, because part of protecting the integrity of the game is ensuring that the subscribership has a reason to continue playing and feels good about the experience that they have. You could potentially say that we’d do an RMT [real money transactions] server, but at the same time you might find that the average subscriber life on an RMT server is lower than on a normal server.
It’s pretty hard to argue this point with a company that has gained one of the largest MMORPG subscription bases in the world as well as earned millions of dollars because of it. We still won’t be able to write off microtransactions because the market may change, but until that happens, Blizzard looks to be holding on to its tried and tested business model.
Blizzard has given word that it has no plans of implementing microtransactions in their popular MMORPG World of Warcraft. While some would argue that it is another potential source of revenue for the company, the co-founder of Blizzard and senior vice-president of product development Frank Pearce thinks otherwise.
He believes that subscribers will be staying around longer and have a better overall gaming experience if they choose not to implement microtransactions. He went on to elaborate why it wasn’t as profitable as most people would believe:
I would say that that’s arguable, because part of protecting the integrity of the game is ensuring that the subscribership has a reason to continue playing and feels good about the experience that they have. You could potentially say that we’d do an RMT [real money transactions] server, but at the same time you might find that the average subscriber life on an RMT server is lower than on a normal server.
It’s pretty hard to argue this point with a company that has gained one of the largest MMORPG subscription bases in the world as well as earned millions of dollars because of it. We still won’t be able to write off microtransactions because the market may change, but until that happens, Blizzard looks to be holding on to its tried and tested business model.
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