Thursday, August 17, 2006

Marketplace and Live Arcade Stats, Downloadable Content news

Gamasutra has an article about Xbox Live Marketplace and Xbox Live Arcade, summarizing things said by Microsoft's Marketplace Business Manager Rohan Oommen.
According to Oommen, there have been over 40 million downloads from the Marketplace since launch, and on average a user has downloaded 20 or more items from the ever expanding selection of more than 2000 downloads. Game demos are the most popular, having an average of 250,000 downloads when released (Prey had 300,000 in the first week alone). Timing is important for demos, and can help increase sales - 40% of the people who downloaded the Fight Night Round 3 demo bought the game.
Between 10% and 50% of the people who downloaded a trial version of an Xbox Live Arcade game ended up purchasing the full version, making the average conversion rate 22%. It was also revealed that the less expensive titles do not make more money, since $10 or $15 games have made more money in the their lifetimes than the $5 ones.
Downloadable content (like Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter's "Chapter 2") is also very profitable, and three games have already made $1 million on added downloadable content. Microsoft said they would like to get content out faster though, adding that companies should assemble a small team that can create additional content so it can be released early on, within the first 60 to 90 days after a game's release.
One new feature Microsoft is planning for Marketplace is "consumables". These would be items you would purchase, but would get used and you could then purchase them again. This seems to me like like a bad idea, just a way for Microsoft to get more money from our gaming addictions.

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