http://gigaom.com/2006/12/21/qa-with-raph-koster/ Wed, 19 Jun 2013 21:16:22 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ http://gigaom.com/2006/12/21/qa-with-raph-koster/#comment-130435 Tue, 16 Jan 2007 02:08:00 +0000 http://gigagamez.wordpress.com/2006/12/21/qa-with-raph-koster/#comment-130435 […] Still, the world does keep growing, with no signs of plateau. In mid-December, when Clay Shirky launched his first Valleywag jeremiad, peak concurrency was about 18,000; four weeks later (see screenshot above) it’s over 26,000. Recently a developer crunched Second Life’s financial numbers, and determined that users were on average spending an astounding $50-60 a week each within the internal economy. […]

]]> http://gigaom.com/2006/12/21/qa-with-raph-koster/#comment-130436 Tue, 16 Jan 2007 02:07:35 +0000 http://gigagamez.wordpress.com/2006/12/21/qa-with-raph-koster/#comment-130436 […] AnalysisBut come on, Second Life has got to be over-hyped, isn’t it? The open source announcement notwithstanding, nor recent news of IBM/Sears or CBS/Star Trek creating sites in-world, how can there possibly be so much enthusiasm for a service which has, at best, about 260,000 active users? […]

]]> http://gigaom.com/2006/12/21/qa-with-raph-koster/#comment-130434 Mon, 15 Jan 2007 23:10:00 +0000 http://gigagamez.wordpress.com/2006/12/21/qa-with-raph-koster/#comment-130434 […] A few things to note from the December sales is the lack of a PS3 exclusive title, which isn’t surprising due to supply constraints and unit pricing, while Nintendo and Microsoft are both included. We should see that problem drop off as more systems and newer games make their way into the market. Nintendo, however, may see reduced chart time as we continue through the winter of 2007 as there isn’t much on the radar from them until March. Microsoft is in a similar boat with the exception of the Halo 3 beta pack-in with Crackdown, due out this February. Topic: Consoles, Portable, Numbers Tags: NPD, PS3, Wii, XBox 360, Zelda, Madden NFL   […]

]]> http://gigaom.com/2006/12/21/qa-with-raph-koster/#comment-130433 Tue, 09 Jan 2007 23:13:04 +0000 http://gigagamez.wordpress.com/2006/12/21/qa-with-raph-koster/#comment-130433 […] By this, he presumably means that Second Life dominates the market for user-created, immersively 3D online worlds in which users retain their IP. Actually, they dominate because they’re the only ones in that specific market, but at least three companies/projects— Multiverse, Raph Koster’s recently announced Areae, and the non-profit Open Croquet— are gunning for entry. And by domination, we really mean Second Life currently has 200,000-230,000 active users; not insignificant, and by some projections, this number will reach 1.6 million by this April. Still, a user base in the hundreds of thousands is something a successful MMORPG can capture in a matter of months (or in World of Warcraft’s case, days). It took Linden Lab over three years to reach that figure. Going open source will spur SL’s growth in the short term, but will surely undermine a collective sense of a unified world, which may, in turn, cause growth to plateau, or even worse, fragment. […]

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