I caught an entry over on C|Net (Link) early this morning about the soon-to-be-released report from Sony on how their “experiment” in the virtual goods market fared over the past year. Well, it appears that Gamasutra is also covering this story and has both an interview with SOE’s John Smedley (Link) and a link to the document (Link – in .doc format). Both articles are worth reading with C|Net also providing some insight from virtual worlds economist Edward Casonova and Gamasutra also providing a “key points” outline of the paper.

I haven’t yet read the white paper, but it should prove to be an interesting report. Not that there’s been much question that Sony’s venture has proven worthwhile (recall that they’ve already indicated as much and promised a free MMORPG based on their early experience – reLink). Even so, as suggested in the C|Net article, detailed data may change some rabidly anti-RMT minds if not some actual design documents. We’ll see.

{Just wanted to point out that somewhat expectedly Raph Koster has posted an entry on this topic (Link)}.