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Entropia Universe: Planet Calypso Sold for $6 Million USD
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
SEE Virtual Worlds has announced its purchase of the first planet in the Entropia Universe, Planet Calypso. Planet Calypso was purchased for a record six million U.S. dollars. The planet has been running since 2003 and has nearly a million registered users and has generated over four million U.S. dollars in player transaction revenue.
The acquisition follows news late last year that SEE Virtual Worlds plans to rollout new planets in the Entropia Universe, beginning with Planet Michael™, a game being developed with the support and involvement of the Michael Jackson Estate, and a Universal Monsters world featuring Van Helsing and Universal Studios' legendary line of cinematic monsters. First Planet Company will be rebranded as "SEE Digital Studios," and will continue to enhance Planet Calypso while taking on new staff for the development of Planet Michael.
"As we move into 2011 and beyond, SEE Virtual Worlds will continue to bring its innovative product offerings to the virtual world marketplace," said Martin Biallas, CEO of SEE Virtual Worlds. "We know that virtual worlds are extremely lucrative and much of our success will be strengthened by working with Mindark and the added experience that First Planet Company brings to the process, having developed the most successful planet in the Entropia Universe to date."
Read more here.
Comments
I dont understand. They bought 1s and 0s on a server?
This game is odd...lol almost like a job.
It seem you can make real money in this game lol
I want to know who the hell plays games and has $6 million to blow on something like this. :
Sounds to me like MindArk got themselves an investor, but did it in a clever way to get press.
I'd strongly recommend reading Halting State from Charles Stross. Maybe it will widen the understanding of underlying business model a bit to the readership.
Stating no understanding of the potential just caters to the entrepeneurs.
they should of just given the money to charity instead of blowing it on some stupid pixels that resemble a planet.
You'd be surprise to know what a rich person can do. Someone in my family work in an hotel chain that have around a couple hundreds locations around the world of and they have a suite that is 4k USD a night. They have this old woman, that have reserved in every hotels of that chain that suite every day. You make the count. When she come, maybe once or twice a year, the only thing she do in her room is break stuff like bulbs etc and then call the service to say something is broken. They send someone, get the thing fixed, 5 minutes later she call back and say it's still broken, they send someone back. Over and over.
So the planet generated 4 mil $ since it creation and someone bought it for 6 mil $? I'm sorry but he's an idiot.
It is a marketing gimmick, 10 to 1 no money exchanged hands. They generate these marketing releases every few months to get people interested in gambling their money away.
Yes, press releases with useless information to the end-user attempting to get people to check their game, how dreadful of them to do that.
That is not a problem however duo to the way MMO's work it is a risky investment. It would mean that in 10 years he will have his money back and in 17 years he made a 4 million profit. This would an income of about 235.294 a year in those 17 years and that is profit alone! So the investment itself is not to bad, just extreamly risky.
This is such nonsense.
At best, someone paid for the thing with in-game currency that the gaming company has randomly pegged the value of to USD.
I'm quite sure no one at the company that runs this game is mailing a $6 million check to anyone, nor is any idiot sending this company a $6 million check for the pixels.
I'ts like if WoW decided 1 Gold = $1,000.00 USD, and started making announcements whenever a leet purple got sold on the AH.
When the MMO is built around a pyramid scheme, yeah, it's pretty despicable to do.
You do realise this game a has a real money economy? People can pay for the money in the game and exchange the ingame money for real money? Beside that Planet Calypso can not be brought with in-game money. Would not really make sense that someone actually buys the game world with in game money from the company, meaning they actually loose all the real income from it,
Your grasp of economical systems is weak at best.. you need more university points grasshopper.
To run it down i am fairly sure.. unless my memory decives me that MindArk needs to have enough founds to lquidate a ceartin % of the worth of the PED in the game,,, So while you say they are "randomly pegged" i would much rather say they have a carefully calculated worth of the PED/USD conversion.
So either way you look at this MA just got a truckload of money and someone just go their own virtual sandbox.. Even if that money was made within the same said sandbox.
This have been a good conversation
Well remember that with the sale of the planet they also bought the design studio that created and maintained the planet for the last 8 years and will use them to create a new planet, That might be cheaper to do then start one yourself and you even get a profitable planet with it, so my guess is that this deal was not so bad.
http://www.entropiaplanets.com/
As is yours of english and reading comprehension, as the point of my post clearly was not to figure out the exchange rate, but point out the fact that this "purchase" was made in in-game currency and is not real. Only by inventing, either randomly or by some wonderfully economically tested formula, some exchange rate of in-game currency to USD can they come up with this nonsensical figure to put on the PR Newswire solely for marketing purposes.
The point still is: nobody wrote a check to the gaming company, nor did the gaming company write a check to anyone. It was all in-game nonsense that the gaming company is dishonestly representing as $6 million.
PhelimReagh:
I think you missunderstand what happened here.
You are confusing past sales of land areas and astroids with what happened in this sale.
SEE purchased the original "planet" which is a franchise type of thing in the Entropia Universe.
This is done outside of the game and should not be confused with purchases made within the game.
It would more closely resemble what would happen if say Blizzard sold WOW to Microsoft. It is the game itself not an item within the game. But in this case the existance of multiple Planets (franchises) means that they purchased a part of the game, not the entire thing.
SEE also owns atleast one more "franchise" planet in the universe which is in development with expectations of several more.
Statements that it was purchased with ingame money, or that it was an individual with more money than brains are untrue.
Here is some more information about SEE,
http://www.seeglobalentertainment.com/about.html
Another "franchise" Planet Partner to keep your eyes out for is Planet Cyrene being designed by Creative Kingdoms
http://www.creativekingdom.com/index_in.html
http://www.entropiaplanets.com/wiki/About_Planet_Cyrene
The PE of old that alot of people here at MMORPG seem to base their openions has changed alot since they really looked at it.
Mind Ark is no longer doing the "world editing" and gfx design. That is being done by Planet Partners through franchise "Planet" ownership.
This anouncement is basicly the sale of the first world which they had originaly done the gfx design for, so now they are purely working on the platform of the universe and balancing of systems.
There are several Planet Partners in existance and in the near future, and it looks like it will be pretty interesting for years to come.
Calypso - the first Planet in PE (project entropia) then owned by FPC(first planet company, a renamed branch of Mind Ark) and now sold to SEE.
Rocktropia - the second planet created and first planet to test the Planet Partner consept of franchising developed by neverdie studios. (still somewhat in beta since all systems arent working yet)
Next Island - the third planet to come online, owned by David Post and developed for him by neverdie studios. (also still in development even though its playable)
Arkadia - not online yet - being developed by Arkadia Studios
Cryene - not online yet - being developed by Creative Kingdom and Creative Scryres
Planet Michael - not online yet - Owned by SEE and will be developed using the development studio acquired in the purchase this article is anouncing.
Beladcom Arabian Planet - not online yet - being developed by Beladcom
Each of these Franchises will bring their own "world" and in affect their own game even though they will exist in the same "universe" as the others. Players will be able to travel from one "game" or "Planet" to the next using their same avatar.
This is a great concept and I am really looking forward to how it plays out. Mean while im having fun participating on the new worlds and being one of the "first" to explore and colonize, and learn the secretes of each one.
if your curious ive started to blog about my experiences there,
Playing With Real Money: Colonizing Virtual Worlds
gl and have fun in your own adventures
narfi
Playing with Real Money: Colonizing Virtual Worlds
0s and 1s on a server...
You guys do know that Microsoft currently generates $62.5B a year and it's mostly 0s and 1s it sells. You don't even own the software, you have a license. This is the software and services business, get used to it, it's only a few decades old...
Incredible how many people try to act like they know stuff when they do not know anything.
I have not played EU for over a year now, but played it for about 3,5 years before that. I really do not think its a game anyone should even attempt to describe unless they played it for months. Because it is deffinately not a game that you can review easily. People usually just call it a casino, but that just shows you know nothing about it. Thats not saying that mindark does not take money from the big majority of people. Winning big in the game is about luck, but not loosing is about playing smart. So far no game has ever tested me so much as EU, but it sure is not for everyone.
Concerning this article, another user posted a very good answer already. Just would like to add that seeing it as a bad investment is a little naive. I am pretty sure that the people that bought treasure island, and club neverdie made their money back long ago.
My life is a game!