{"id":2679,"date":"2013-01-31T19:12:40","date_gmt":"2013-01-31T19:12:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/?p=2679"},"modified":"2013-01-31T19:12:40","modified_gmt":"2013-01-31T19:12:40","slug":"new-land-products-would-halt-the-land-losses-but-what-would-they-do-for-lls-revenue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sl.governormarley.com\/?p=2679","title":{"rendered":"New Land Products Would Halt The Land Losses, But What Would They Do For LL’s Revenue?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tyche Shepherd this week reported<\/a> that the grid is ligher to the tune of another 61 private regions, this brings the losses for this year to roughly around 235, I say roughly because I’m basing this on Tyche’s last four reports and there’s a little bit of carry over from the last day or two of last year and the last report was on January 27th, so it is almost certainly slighly higher.<\/p>\n

Now a lot of people want Linden Lab to slash tier and in many ways, that would halt the decline, for example they could slash the tier on homesteads back down to USD$75.00, or slash the tier on Openspaces to USD$25.00 a month and insist they’re only used for scenery with a stingy prim count. Openspaces at USD$75.00 a month seems extremely high to me. They could even slash tier on full regions to say USD$195.00 a month. All of these moves would halt the decline of sim losses, temporarily at least. However another route would be to introduce new products.<\/p>\n

Now there’s no doubt that one way Linden Lab could halt the losses is to introduce new land products, such as a region that supports 7,500 prims for around USD$150.00 per month, or a region that supports 11,250 prims for USD$225.00 a month, or mega regions that were double, treble or quadruple the size of current regions in terms of prim count and land mass but had a pro-rata rata tier rate that was a fair bit cheaper than four individual regions, that might appeal to the large Land Barons.<\/p>\n

There is a precedent for new products increasing the land mass, it came with the Openspace fiasco. When Linden Lab removed the requirement to buy Openspaces in packs of four and then allowed them to be placed anywhere on the grid, the land mass exploded, so much so that on July 8th 2008 Zee Linden opened his blog post <\/a>with:<\/p>\n

“Linden Lab is pleased to announce results for Second Life the second Quarter.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0Land mass grew over 44%. The total number of regions owned by residents increased 44.2% over Q1 to just over 1.5 billion square meters. Our growth was due to the popularity of our newly launched \u201cOpenspace\u201d land product along with a change in pricing to make the purchase of land more accessible to first time buyers.<\/em>”<\/p>\n

Now as those of us who were around at the time know, this didn’t end well, but in terms of bringing new land to the grid, the Openspace initiative produced staggering results.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

There’s no doubt that the explosion in land mass was due to the Openspace initiative because that was introduced near the end of Q1, by July Zee was blogging on the results of Q2, where the initiative had fully grabbed the public’s attention. Well largely, I was moaning about them not being used as intended and undermining land that should have been used for the purposes Openspaces were, I still hadn’t purchased one by this stage. I would in August when I gave up moaning about them, more fool me.<\/p>\n

Anyway the initiative was a success in terms of land mass, however it was a temporary boost, a spectacular temporary boost, but a temporary boost all the same. The sales of the product started to tail off in September and then, well I’m not getting into it, but it simply didn’t end well.<\/p>\n

So what would be the purpose of any such initiative if it only provides a boost over the course of a few months? Good question because many people would increase their land mass and reduce their tier liabilities if Linden Lab introduced new products now. For example, many who could grab the half region option, would switch their full sim to two regions and then ditch one of them. However others wouldn’t, they would split their full sim into two half regions, which would increase the land mass but do bugger all in terms of increased revenue for Linden Lab. Tyche’s graphs would see an upward trajectory, Linden Lab’s revenue would show a downward trajectory and that is why such initiatives are unlikely to happen. Linden Lab could of course introduce new products but not allow people to convert regions, that would still see some reducing their tier liability whereas others may well be tempted to dip their toes into the water but I wouldn’t expect to see anything spectacular.<\/p>\n

The other issue with new products would also be that many who were here during the Openspace boom would take a once bitten, twice shy attitude to new land products, even though there’s a new management team in place these days.<\/p>\n

Revenue is the issue for Linden Lab, as Inara Pey pointed out so graphically in her blog post : Tier cuts: looking from the lab’s perspective<\/a>, the fall in revenue Linden Lab would get from tier cuts far outstrips the fall in revenue Linden Lab are getting from losing around sixty sims a week. Inara pointed out that cutting tier by a third would lost the lab $1,400,520 in tier revenue, to make up for that, growth would need to be 1,337 private regions a month and that simply would not happen.<\/p>\n

This is why I’ve long been arguing that Linden Lab need more revenue streams before they can cut tier, because the bottom line for Linden Lab always will be and always has to be, revenue. One way of course of increasing revenue is increasing the number of paying customers. Linden Lab’s moves to Amazon and Steam are surely aimed at doing this, improving the new user experience would help too. This is why I wish Linden Lab the very best with these ventures and want them to succeed.<\/p>\n

However, as painful as tier is, and as painful as it is to watch sims struggle and vanish, the issue is one of revenue. I am firmly in the tier is too damn high camp, it is simply stifling for creative ventures, which means Second Life misses out on some of the creativity that would attract people to sign up and stay. The circle is unfortunately vicious. However, Linden Lab’s options are limited. However, as I’ve said many times before, tier income is still healthy, Second Life isn’t going away anytime soon, so Linden Lab have time to take more measures to attract new users, but they really need to get their thinking caps on.<\/p>\n

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