When Freemium Fails (WSJ article)

[Fumni]

Not directly talking about MapleStory, but this article talks about the pay model that Nexon (and various other internet businesses) uses to attract a customer base. Feel free to read and discuss this as you see fit.

When Freemium Fails

[Aircalibur]

Out of curiosity, is there a statistic on what percentage of Nexon's userbase purchase NX? I'm a bit curious about that.

One thing interesting about MapleStory, and (I think) all of Nexon's games is that no items from the Cash Shop are required to play the game. They often make it easier, and make it look nicer, but you can still get more or less the same experience without paying a cent.

Kinda.

[Sorien]

From what the article said, I think the freemium strategy was failing in cases where there were no alternatives; however, I will begrudgingly say that Maple doesn't restrict anyone who doesn't pay, and there are alternatives to buying NX.

Then again, I bet Nexon would actually make more money if they would make cubes cost only 50 cents or something. I've never bought cubes simply because I don't think just one shot at maybe upgrading one item is worth paying 1-5 dollars, but if they cost something under one dollar I'd be happy to throw some spare change at them every once in a while. I know plenty of people who are of the same sentiment, and since they'd be bound to have some spare NX they might end up tossing it at some other shiny items in the cash shop before they feel the need to buy cubes again; thus, they would have to charge more NX in order to toss more spare change at cubes.

[SaptaZapta]

I think that, rather than make cubes cheaper, they should raise the probability of success (rank increase or good lines).
People get frustrated and swear off cubing (for a while...) after they waste dozens of cubes on an item and it doesn't improve. You don't usually see "I used $100 worth of cubes and it didn't improve" but rather "I used 30 sooperdooper cubes and it's still epic".

Same is true for gach and all the other forms of in-game gambling. Reduce the amount of worthless "prizes" and more people would be inclined to buy tickets. And since the valuable prizes don't actually cost Nexon any more to produce than the junk, it's not like they're going to lose anything.

[Satellite]

I think that, rather than make cubes cheaper, they should raise the probability of success (rank increase or good lines).
People get frustrated and swear off cubing (for a while...) after they waste dozens of cubes on an item and it doesn't improve. You don't usually see "I used $100 worth of cubes and it didn't improve" but rather "I used 30 sooperdooper cubes and it's still epic".

Same is true for gach and all the other forms of in-game gambling. Reduce the amount of worthless "prizes" and more people would be inclined to buy tickets. And since the valuable prizes don't actually cost Nexon any more to produce than the junk, it's not like they're going to lose anything.

I have only bought like 4 or 5 cubes total. I've NEVER got anything good. With my luck I think it's just absolute waste to buy them, when I could buy stuff precubed from FM.

Then again, I don't give a flying f'uck if my equips are crap nowadays. It would be wrong to call MS a "Grindfest" anymore, leveling is so easy, that it isn't even funny. More accurate term for current MS would be a "Moneyfest". Hell, even if I got perfect equips for my Aran, what reward would I get for it? I would get to lvl200 and then I would be required to buy ANOTHER set of perfect equips for some other job.

[Polantaris]

Same is true for gach and all the other forms of in-game gambling. Reduce the amount of worthless "prizes" and more people would be inclined to buy tickets. And since the valuable prizes don't actually cost Nexon any more to produce than the junk, it's not like they're going to lose anything.

Technically, if people are still buying a lot of gach, then by increasing the rate of getting good rewards would satisfy people quicker and as a result make them stop buying them, and they would lose money.

Of course, that's assuming that the ratio of purchases by people who decide that gash is a good investment after that change, combined with the people who would still buy gach, is smaller than the amount of gach they are already selling.

In case my point is confusing, what I mean is:
If 10 people buy an average of 100 tickets to get what they want, that means an average of 1,000 tickets are sold. If they then make it so that you only need an average of 50 tickets to get what you want, but the amount of people buying increases to only 15, then they are selling an average of 750 tickets instead, and therefore losing money.

It's a risky gamble in the terms of profit. They would probably never perform such a change unless they knew for a fact it would increase sales overall.

The same deal goes for Cubes as well. At the end of the day everything goes back to money. It always does.

[Leaves]

Out of curiosity, is there a statistic on what percentage of Nexon's userbase purchase NX? I'm a bit curious about that.

Yes. Their overall paying rate for ALL games across ALL territories is 10.3% (as stated in the Q2 Investor Relations Presentation).

In case you're wondering... this translates to approximately 7,972,200 million paying users per month, and an ARPPU (Average Revenue per Paying User) of 19.32 US dollars (for an average month in Q2).

[Endgame]

They probably make millions a year from GMS cubers alone.

They're not going to raise the "success rate" on cubes.