Station Exchange pulls in about $250,000 (1 Viewer)

[Frybread]

I'm sure that's less than most in-game money making companies make in a month.

Why didn't Sony do better?

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20070207/zenke_01.shtml

Gamasutra: Despite the paper's statement that revenue for the company from the Station Exchange was 'not a significant source', $274,083 is nothing to write off either. Given the monetary success of the Station Exchange for both SOE and participating players, are there any plans to expand the service to all game servers? If not, what is keeping you from taking that step?

JS: Absolutely not. We said at the start that we would keep it on separate servers, and we intend to keep that promise. In the future we will include some form of Exchange in some of our games, although we are leaning towards only allowing certain types of non-game impacting items to be sold.

 

[Lesson25]

Why didn't Sony do better?

I'd say too conservative an approach--"non-game impacting" says it all. How much can you really expect to profit when you are can't offer any real advantages to your customers other than aesthetics?

Other possibilities:

*Rejection from the majority of the gaming community (it's one thing to secretly solicit the black-market of services like www.power-leveling.com & the whatnot, but perhaps engaging the very same service that is hosting the game to begin w/ & doing it in a very public manner flags some ethical concerns amongst some gamers)?
*Inability to compete against the existing market?