Like a plucky last wicket stand by Australian batsmen at the first ashes test, Private sims are desperately clinging on to their status above the 20,000 mark, with the latest Tyche Shepherd survey revealing there are 20,006 private sims on the grid.
Like the plucky last wicket stand, resistance to going below the 20,000 barrier would appear to be somewhat futile. the amount of private sims on the grid will dip below the 20,000 mark soon. However a couple of weeks ago, on June 30th, Tyche was reporting that private sims had descreased by 4.6% for the year, with a loss of 959 sims, which at that point left 20,033 private sims on the grid. However by the same time last year there had been a decline for the year of 5.2%, 1,230 sims, so the rate of decline is slowing although it shows no signs of stopping.
The tier remains too high and slashing tier would probably halt the decline, but that would hit revenue for Linden Lab. There are other underlying factors behind the decline.The reasons for the decline are not just due to the costs of tier or even the change in dynamics brought about by the rise of the Marketplace.
I’ve long said that Linden Lab need to get more creative in their tier models, that something to do sims need some loving, but there are no signs of that happening and the longer the decline goes on, the less wiggle room Linden Lab have.
Where matters go from here I don’t really know, Tyche’s recent private estate survey suggested that losses for the last couple of months are around 0.7%, but that estimated tier revenue still stands at a healthy US$4,028,000 +/- US$50,000. That’s not to be sniffed at but 12 months ago in June 2012 that estimated figure was US$4,709,000 +/- US$56,000 and there were 22,627 private regions on the grid.
Therefore in the last 12 months private regions have shrunk by around 2,621 and estimated tier per month has shrunk by around US$681,000. The figures suggest there’s no need to man the lifeboats, but some sort of boost or incentive for owning private regions is overdue here. Linden Lab need to spread the load of their income stream over more properties and remove so much of the burden from private regions, that’s not something that can happen overnight but really, a change of direction is overdue.
For more Tyche Shepherd statistical goodies visit http://www.gridsurvey.com/
LL made a number of poor design and management decisions and now they’re trapped in their choices. Heh.
I could never figure out why a private sim should cost 50% more than a mainland sim. Sre you can control the water level and can raise and lower the land to your heart’s content. Is that worth an extra 100 usd a month?