Linden Lab has announced that it’s adjusting land pricing and the volume of Mainland which combined with its previous release of a new structure for low-prim sims suggests that it’s continuing its trend of land become increasingly a commodity, against the competitive backdrop of OpenSim and other Grids that offer sims for as little as $100/month.
The news will be welcome by people who want to purchase private islands. And I imagine that on the heels of the recent IBM announcement is meant to continue the encouragement of mainland. As the “grid” becomes more splintered, with companies and individuals moving to competing grids, (with the intention to at some point link to those grids), and with companies soon being able to shift behind firewall-protected regions, Linden seems to be acknowledging that the market is pushing for both more ubiquitous use of virtual worlds, and pricing that will make it increasingly accessible.
While the news is welcome, as always I’m left with the sense that there’s either a very well thought-out plan, or there is no plan and they’re making it up as they go along. Maybe I’m reading too much into such a radical price change? A reduction from $1600 to $1000 for a sim is a significant drop. Releasing more mainland in order to drop the average price is a significant move as well.
I’m curious what the strategic framework is for their decision making on these things. Time will tell.
And as a follow-up comment, I’m stuck with a whack of sims at the old price. It’s a major chunk of change, sure. And I understand why people might feel like they’ve had the wind knocked out of their sails. I suppose I feel lucky, was about to order 4 more, so I seemed to have timed my hesitation OK. Unfortunately for some, real estate in SL isn’t so much as an investment as space upon which to develop assets and services. I haven’t thought through the economics of SL deeply enough to know whether this is a bad thing, just have the feeling it’s an inevitable one.
We need to organize some virtual civil disobedience, form a players’ union.
I should call myself lucky because all land but 6144sqm on my SIMs is sold – the decrease in SIM value doesn’t hit me but parcel owners. I already got my initial investment back – and now really praise myself that from start on I gave buyers a much lower monthly cost to pay than renters, encouraging them to buy and not rent.
This is an interesting one, been back and forth over it. Ultimately more people owning more land in SL has to be a good thing, so from that viewpoint it’s great.
I have to welcome it from a selfish standpoint too, i’ve been dithering about buying my first island for 2 years – i think this just swayed the decision slightly! Life Lesson: be more patient, sometimes it pays.
On the downside, I can’t escape the feeling Linden just did to land-dealers what they do to ripped-off content-creators every other day. Still, maybe it’s all to the common good?
I think a more significant announcement and one that goes hand in hand with the price drop is the change with regard to openspace sims. Get 4 times the land area now 512x 512 meters & the same number of prims, 15000 for the same dollar as an old small sim. Why would you want to be on a crowded Mainland sim and have to rez all that shit. By distributing content over 4 times the area, you get less lag.
@jeanricard: It will be interesting to see if they change the price for the open space SIMs too. They just made them a fair deal a few weeks ago, if they want them to stay a fair deal, they have to lower them to 250 USD too. I’m really waiting for the next blog post about that, Jack announced one for maybe even today.
@jeanricard…As I understand it, when you buy an Open Space sim, the processor that it is tied to may not be on the same server as your other sims. Meaning that you may get unlucky enough to have one sim linked with 3 others that have a bunch of laggy scripts and drags the processor speed (and your sim) down with it.
Personally, I think when you buy land in SL to rent out or flip, then you are speculating. And there are risks so you should be prepared for them. Anyone who goes into speculative activities without the thought that they may lose their shirts is extremely naive.
I have a feeling, although I’m not sure (too lazy to look it up, it’s gray and rainy and it leaves me thoughtful but unproductive) that if you buy 4 Open Space sims they put them on the same server.
But one of the things I’m curious about is if the sims are spread across 4 “regions” does each region support 40 avatars? Or does it support 10/region. (Or whatever the number is, can’t remember the max per region, and I realize it adjusts for other things).
If each Open Space region supports 40, it would mean that one server could support 160 users and 15,000 prims. If an Open Space region only support 1/4 of the user limit, is 10 sufficient, or does the entire server itself support 40? In which case, if you’re sharing an Open Space region with someone else on the same server, what if they reach the 40 limit? Are you left locked out of your empty Open Space region because it’s “full”?
Daniel – maybe you can clarify, I think you know more about this than some of us!