A new survey by data firm Qutee has revealed that only 1.3% of gamers like the microtransaction model. 22% of respondents disliked them, calling the practice “toxic”, but the majority, 67%, also said they were “okay” with microtransactions that were only for cosmetic items.
However, because we can never agree on anything, only 2% of respondents said they prefer paying for everything at once.
Streaming was incredibly popular with 61.8% of respondants tuning in at least once a week, but only 5% said they were interested in purchasing a VR headset.
“The Gaming Today debate shows that the industry is in the midst of a cultural shift while simultaneously experiencing growing pains,” said Flint Barrow, co-founder and CTO of Qutee. “The pursuit of profit in some quarters has led to stagnation at best, and predatory tactics at worst. Gamers are watching and are at the centre of the interplay between passion and innovation meeting the bottom line. Fortunately, the market is so large it leaves room for fragmentation, where companies on both sides can successfully carve out a niche.”
The data was harvested from “answers during an online debate that got over 10,000 poll votes (including almost 2,000 in-depth comments across over 450 discussion topics).” That doesn’t sound like a particularity representative group in my opinion, what do you think?
Source: MCV
MrYd
2000 comments from 450 discussions? 4 or 5 comments per discussion? Yes, of course you can come to some conclusion from that. They’d be better off just reading the comments here.
And 10,000 poll votes? Assuming they did more than 1 poll, yes, that’s going to be statistically significant results there.
(Yes, all that was sarcasm)
I could possibly believe the 5% interested in a VR headset number though, and I don’t think it’s as bad as it might seem. For Sony, taking 75m PS4s and close to 2.5m PSVRs sold already, that could bring the number of PSVRs sold up to 6m. Those numbers, along with it only being available for 15 months so far, should lead to more bigger games that help sell more headsets. Which should make that 5% figure shoot up quite quickly.
The numbers about microtransactions are pretty worthless though.
JR.
I don’t think anyone ‘likes’ Microtransactions – other than publishers/developers.
The real question is how many people are willing to buy them anyway? Probably a lot or else they wouldn’t exist.
Dazbobaby
maybe it’s just a handful of rich kids carrying the whole idea forward?
Dazbobaby
carrying the whole industry into M.T. while others just shake their collective heads.
JR.
Damn rich kids! Like they aren’t already detestable enough :D
Severn2j
That may actually be the case. I read an article awhile ago about the mobile gaming industry and in-app purchases and that is essentially what happens – 99% of people dont buy anything, but a handful will spend so much money that it carries the rest.