Micropayments For Virtual Goods

Seems like there’s increasing discussion concerning the market for virtual goods. The latest article I’ve stumbled across is Wired’s “Micropayments Drive Asian Games” (Link). From the article:

Some of the most popular games in Asia are given away for free and charge no subscription dues, but collect micropayments for custom avatars and other items. Social networking is a key feature of the games, and it turns out players are quick to fork over yen and yuan to tweak their appearance to their liking.

This sort of thing is neither new nor surprising and I’ve discussed it with some frequency on this blog. If you’d like to get caught up, try some of these earlier entries:

XB0x 2 – Microsoft announces Marketplace and Micro-transactions

Virtual Careers and Cyber-Accesorising – includes an example of a kid running up his parents’ credit card buying virtual accessories

Sony Exchange Live – Sony gets a piece of the action

Cell Phone Avatars – comments about and link to a good BusinessWeek article

Saving Their PlanetSide – Sony begins experimenting with different business models

Making the Game (and more) – C|Net article on player-created content

Monkey-wrestling With Avatars – comments related to a basically uninformed Ad Age article

Trials and Tribulations of Virtual Property – China setting legal precedants for virtual property

That should keep readers busy for a bit.