The Cost of Microtransactions or Rather the Profit

Research boffins Superdata Research have published some numbers about microtransactions on console in the USA recently. The numbers are pretty impressive.

Over the past year, 23 million USA console gamers spent $352 Million US. None of this is money spent on expansion packs or maps, it's just the fluff like class unlocks, guns, vanity pets etcetera.

 It's reported that there were 1.9 million active users last year which is a climb from 1.6 in 2012 the number of paying users climbed by 1.1% to 5.1 too.

At the Game Developer Conference this year, Sony revealed that its revenue from free-to-play titles on the PS3 and PS4 had doubled since last year. For the US market, conversion rates were 7.1% which tallies with  Sony’s stated “3-15%”. Today, Sony offers just 12 titles that feature microtransactions, including Blacklight Retribution, Warframe, and DC Universe Online. So they must be grinning like idiots right now.

 The research also said some genres monetize better than others, with nearly half of the paying players citing first-person shooters (24 percent) or action-adventure games (21 percent) as their favourite genres.