Digital sales poised as game changer

By Ben Fritz and Alex Pham
February 9, 2010



The future of the video game business is playing out very differently on two sides of Los Angeles. In Westwood, nearly 200 people recently lost their jobs when Pandemic Studios, the maker of Saboteur and other gritty video games, shut its doors. But 12 miles east, at Nexon Corp.'s U.S. division, bustling staffers are upbeat as they prepare to double the size of their workforce. The South Korean publisher best known for its lighthearted game MapleStory saw sales climb 12% in 2009.

Whether it's $15-a-month subscriptions to World of Warcraft, $10 downloads on a PlayStation 3, 99-cent iPhone games or ad-supported games on Facebook, digital transactions are growing fast and could be the future of the video game business.

Companies such as Playfish, Nexon and Zynga Game Network Inc., meanwhile, offer free versions of their games and generate revenue by "upselling" players on additional content. Nexon has a catalog of more than 10,000 virtual accessory items for sale that run from $1 for colored contact lenses for characters to a $32.90 sniper rifle. Most players never touch any of it, but the minority who do buy the features are enough to make it a viable business, company executives note.

"We operate by the 80/20 rule," said Min Kim, Nexon America Inc.'s vice president of marketing. "Twenty percent of our audience make up 80% of our revenue."

You can read the whole article here.

Hahah oh I see now...one of the game's patchers must have heard him say that and thats where he got the idea to mess with the exp.
Good job Min Kim.

Man, the part where it says the vast majority don't buy NX... I'm not sold on that. I see very few nxless people.

I refuse to ever buy Nx

Or buying NX with mesos off people who waste their paycheck on it.

I have not spent real money on this game for almost 10 months now.