{"id":71,"date":"2005-03-21T13:54:28","date_gmt":"2005-03-21T21:54:28","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=71"},"modified":"2024-06-11T14:00:03","modified_gmt":"2024-06-11T21:00:03","slug":"getting-xd-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/?p=71","title":{"rendered":"Getting X&#8217;d Out"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Although not definitive, <a href=\"http:\/\/today.reuters.com\/news\/newsArticle.aspx?type=technologyNews&#038;storyID=2005-03-19T132159Z_01_N18236924_RTRIDST_0_TECH-MEDIA-VIDEOGAMES-MICROTRANSACTIONS-DC.XML\">this piece<\/a> over on Reuters makes it sound increasingly as if Microsoft&#8217;s Xbox 2 &#8220;Marketplace&#8221; will be more like a corporate-run mall instead of an open-air flea market. That would be a shame imo. Having spent the last couple of days exploring <a href=\"http:\/\/secondlife.com\/\">Second Life<\/a> where players actually create content within the virtual world and conduct both virtual and real monetary transactions directly, I&#8217;m having a hard time imagining how a closed virtual economy can be a good thing. If game developers interface to MS&#8217;s Marketplace &#8211; and there&#8217;s a strong likelihood they will &#8211; they&#8217;ll need Content to continue flowing long after the game ships to consumers. And unless they intend to diversify into what, in the real world, is essentially an after-market &#8220;parts&#8221; market, I expect that they&#8217;ll start outsourcing this secondary activity to &#8220;modders&#8221;. And of course, everyone loves middlemen and the power they have to control (aka raise) prices. Same as it ever was&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Although not definitive, this piece over on Reuters makes it sound increasingly as if Microsoft&#8217;s Xbox 2 &#8220;Marketplace&#8221; will be more like a corporate-run mall instead of an open-air flea market. That would be a shame imo. Having spent the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/?p=71\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[138,121,104],"class_list":["post-71","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-retransmit","tag-microtransactions","tag-videogames","tag-virtualgoods"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=71"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2448,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71\/revisions\/2448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=71"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=71"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=71"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}