Sim Total Number Growth, Slight Decline In Private Estates, Continues

 

The current number of sims is 27,735 according to the Second Life Grid Survey. That's more than the number there were at the start of the year according to an article by Daniel Voyager, 27,659. But there is one small detail with the statistics: the number of private sims.

 

As most residents know, some sims are outright owned by Linden Lab while the majority are run by private residents. At the start of the year, January 1, 2023, there were 18,370 private sims and 9289 Linden-owned sims. By July 2, the number of private sims had dipped to 18,330 and the number of Linden owned once had rose to 9360. As of the last report in November 19, the number of Linden run sims had once again risen, to 9542. But once again, the amount of private sims dropped slightly, to 18,193. 

 

So there are 177 fewer private sims and 253 more Linden-run sims than at the beginning of the year. This trend isn't necessarily a bad thing for Linden Lab. While private sims do bring in a lot of money, $210 USD a month, the Linden Home sims on Bellisseria can hold plenty of Linden Homes, and plenty of Premium residents, who pay $12 each a month. And then there's the money they spend, of which the easiest way to get is to buy Linden dollars. On the other hand, private sims can be used to create great and interesting builds, which can attract curious people to Second Life by word of mouth.

So will these trends continue? Time will tell.

Sources: Daniel Voyager's Blog, Second Life Grid Survey

Bixyl Shuftan

News and Commentary: Second Life Revenue Reportedly Down By Half In Eight Years, Number of Sims Drops Below 24K

Some troubling news was posted on the SL Universe forums by Tyche Shepard, and passed on by Hamlet Au. In Tyche's private estate survey in January, she estimated that the revenue Linden Lab makes from Second Life sim tiers had dropped to just under three million US dollars a year, or 36 million a year. Hamlet Au when seeing this information calculated that as the Lab makes about 80% of it's money from Second Life through tier payments, the rest through premium accounts, Linden dollar purchases, and fees, their total income from the virtual world was about 50 million US dollars.

While that is a lot of money, consider that in 2009 Linden Lab's income was estimated to be about 100 million dollars. This represents a drop in income of fifty percent. The Lab is making only half now what they were eight years ago.

This drop in revenue can easily be seen as an explanation for certain actions Linden Lab has taken over the past year and a half, such as reducing the set-up fees for getting sims, lowering sim tiers for a time (in exchange for a fee), and increasing the prim capacity for sims. It's also a partial explanation for why Linden Lab is making a gamble with Sansar. They're not making the money they used to.

But according to Tyche's statistics from January 2, despite the moves Linden Lab has made, the overall slow decline of the number of sims in Second Life continued throughout 2016. In the first quarter of 2017, the total number of sims dropped below 24,000. Linden Lab may very well conclude Sansar is their sole chance for stopping their revenue slide. Hamlet's earlier observation that Sansar was starting to remind him more and more of the old Blue Mars virtual world, which after less than two years was pretty much on it's way out, is not exactly an encouraging sign.

While Sansar may not be "do or die" for Linden Lab as Hamlet also suggested, it's failure would be a huge blow as it would mean a significant investment in resources would get no return, and limit the Lab's options. In the short term, it might mean more tier reductions and more advantages for premium account members as Linden Lab takes more steps to try to stop the decline. In the long term if the decline continues, the Lab may decide to let some of it's members go in a "restructuring," reduce customer service, and other steps to reduce their overhead. And if that doesn't work, well, that may be best left unmentioned.

Sources: New World Notes, SL Universe, Second Life Grid Survey

Bixyl Shuftan

Pokemon GO Numbers In Decline

Pokemon GO was the game of the summer. The number of users of the mobile ap augmented reality game skyrocketed since it's release on July 5th to close to 45 million in about two weeks. But that's as far as it's numbers got, and it late July and August was steadily getting smaller. More than 12 million have stopped playing, "Data from Sensor Tower, SurveyMonkey, and Apptopia," stated Luke Kawa in Bloomberg, "show that Pokemon Go's daily active users, downloads, engagement, and time spent on the app per day are all well off their peaks and on a downward trend."

So why the decline? Over the weeks there have been a number of cautionary stories in the news about careless Pokemon players getting into accidents or getting robbed. But the real reasons for the decline appear to be shortcomings in the game itself, not much you can do with critters once they're caught, no quests, no way for players to duel, the gameplay seemed to be centered on capturing "gyms" that were held by monsters that were of a level unrealistic to reach by casual players. There have also apparently been server issues that have been quite irritating to players.

Hamlet Au predicted that eventually the userbase will settle to a dedicated core of about fifteen to five million. Certainly not a bad number for a game, but he felt Pokemon GO's decline would have a negative impact on the augmented gaming market that it had earlier sparked interest in, To succeed in a truly massive way, an AR game needs to be linked with a massive, well-established brand that has a 'fantastic, invisible parallel world' premise well-integrated into its branding."

Kawa suggested that over the long term, the augmented reality market would remain smaller than the one for virtual worlds, citing one analyst, "The Google Trends data is already showing declining interest in augmented reality, whereas interest in virtual reality remains high."


Sources: New World Notes, Bloomberg, Yahoo, PC Mag, Arstechnica 

Bixyl Shuftan

Second Life Statistics Show Continued Slow Decline

For some time, the total amount of privately held land in Second Life has been in a slow decline, and the most recent statistics from The Second Life Grid Survey show the trend continuing.

The latest numbers show the number of private sims to be 26,403. In the SL Universe forums, Tyche Shepherd stated this was a loss of 1568 since the start of the year, or 7.5%. While not as big a decline as last year's 2500, it's still not good news. Daniel Voyager estimated at this rate, the total would drop to about 24,000 in a year.

Hamlet Au had two things to say about this development. One was that the declining tier revenue was being partially made up by Blocksworld and other aps owned by Linden Lab outside Second Life. Should tier continue to fall, the Lab will depend more on it as a source of revenue. The second was a reminder to readers not to expect tier rates to fall, and that was no solution to Second Life's shrinking land area. If for no other reason most virtual property was in the hands of a handful of land barons, whom are doing fairly well. A drop in tier, Hamlet felt, would just mean a severe drop in revenue from Second Life. To stop Second Life from shrinking, Hamlet argued, the Lab needs to find a way for it to attract more new users. Hamlet got a number of suggestions from readers about how the lab could, though they were skeptical about the Lab's willingness, and competence to do so.


So can Second Life turn around, or will the slow shrinkage continue?

Source: Second Life Grid Survey

Bixyl Shuftan

Update on Linden Lab's Blocksworld

Last month, New World Notes reported that Blocksworld, the building game bought by Linden Lab earlier this year, had become number three of the most popular  iPad apps, "For the first time … Second Life is not Linden Lab's sole hit product." A few days ago however, the reports were less rosy. It wasn't in the top 100 in either the "Overall" or "Games" categories, where the big bucks were made. Where it was showing up was in the "Family" selection of apps. A small source of revenue through parents making purchases, though not nearly the amount top apps like "Candy Crush" make.

Ener Hax's "Iliveisl" blog did a post with a graph showing one reason why many feel it's important to Second Life that Linden Lab gets another product bringing in money: declining tier revenues. From it's peak in 2011 when nearly 25,000 private sims were raking in over five million US dollars, the number has shrunk to less than 20,000 private sims with an income of less then four million US dollars. While the rate of decline seems to be slowing down, it's still a shrinking source of cash for Linden Lab.

Fortunately, there's still Linden Lab's indie game distribution site, Desura. And there are hopes that Oculus Rift could give Second Life a second wind. But it appears the earlier hopes about Blocksworld have been cut down to size.

Sources: New World Notes, Iliveisl 

Bixyl Shuftan

News & Commentary: Second Life's Declining Sim Numbers

Last week, Daniel Voyager published some statistics from the Second Life Grid Survey. The results were disappointing, if not disturbing. The number of places across the Grid is dropping, the number over the past year having fallen over 11 percent, and residents not staying inworld as long. So why is this happening and what can be done about it? There's been a few opinions on the issue.

Read more in Extra.

More Troubles for "Star Wars the Old Republic," Future of "Pay to Play" MMOs Questioned

A few days ago, "Star Wars the Old Republic" was given six nominations for the Annual Game Developers Choice Online Awards. But this seems to be the only good news for the once up and coming online game, which lately has had problems keeping up it's numbers of customers.

Earlier this summer, it was reported after initial success, "Star Wars the Old Republic" began dropping in subscribers. More recently has come another unfortunate development: SWTOR's executive producer Rich Vogel is reportedly leaving the company, in addition of talk of further layoffs from the game's developer Bioware.

Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitello made the most interesting comment about the games recent troubles, "Our conclusion was we had a great product in Star Wars, but that the subscription model in the world of free-to-play was challenging." Indeed, there are reports that BioWare is considering going beyond the free trials to play the game to making it free to play. Riccitiello stated that EA was looking at "different models to bring in more users into the game," but would not confirm that a free-to-play one was in the works. The companies would only say, "In the weeks ahead, we will announce plans for growing The Old Republic with new content, new players, and new ways to play."

Hamlet Au commented that these troubles were a sure sign that the "pay to play" model for Massive Multiplayer Online Games was coming to a close, "if Vogel, one of the best MMO developers in the business, can't sustain a subscription-based MMO associated with the most well-known sci-fi fantasy franchise in the world, no one can." In my own opinion, I wouldn't say this means "pay to play" is over, but that "World of Warcraft" has pretty much cornered the market as it remains strong with millions of paying customers.

It should be noted that in recent months, World of Warcraft has been losing subscribers as well. The latest expansion, "The Mists of Pandaria" should help in the short term. The long term will require Blizzard being more successful at retaining customers than it currently is.

As for "Star Wars," I never could play it on my computer as no Mac version was ever developed.

Sources: Massively, Gamasutra, Brokentoys, Gamespot, New World Notes, Image from "Sneak Peek."

Bixyl Shuftan