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World of Tanks makes more per user than LoL, GW2, and everyone else
Wargaming's tank-based lobby battler generated more revenue per user than League of Legends and Dota 2 over the past 12 months. In fact, World of Tanks generated more ARPU than any other major F2P title, according to Superdata. "There's World of Tanks, which has a monthly active user base of around 9.1 million and makes $4.51 per month per user. And there's League of Legends, with 58.5 million average monthly actives over the past twelve months, and a $1.32 spend per user. Five times the audience, but less than [a] third of the earnings per player," Superdata says. After WoT, the top five includes Team Fortress 2, Guild Wars 2, War Thunder, and PlanetSide 2.
MetroPCS Q4 results are in: increased revenue, slowing growth
The nation's fifth largest wireless provider -- MetroPCS -- has checked in with its Q4 2011 financials, and on the whole, the company looks to be doing quite well. Metro reported $1.2 billion in consolidated quarterly revenues and $362 million in earnings, an increase of 16% and 15% when compared to the fourth quarter of 2010. A few other positive vitals: average revenue per user (ARPU) was up $0.76, net income rose to $77 million and churn dropped 80 basis points from 4.5% in Q3 to 3.7% in Q4. Two small blemishes can be found in the net customer additions and cost per user (CPU) columns. While MetroPCS added well over 197,000 new customers in Q4, the rate at which it grew slowed dramatically -- down 34% when compared to the fourth quarter of 2010. The company's CPU also rose $1.17 during that same period -- which can be partially attributed to LTE network services, along with general expansion and operating costs. One other mildly unfortunate note was word that voice over LTE wouldn't be launching till the second half of the year, slightly later than we had been anticipating. Taking all that into consideration, it was still a strong quarterly showing from the value-centered wireless carrier.
Did you fire off a bunch of texts this Christmas? Welcome to the museum
Finland might be the spiritual home of the SMS, but it also proves that this ancient form of communication is going the way of the rune stone. A mere 8.5 million texts were sent over the country's Sonera network on Christmas Eve, versus 10.9 million on that festive day in 2010. The same trend was spotted on other Finnish networks and also on the other side of the world: Christmas Day texts in Hong Kong were down nearly 14 percent on the year before, and Telstra in Australia experienced a nine percent year-on-year decline over the whole of 2011. Things are different in America, where texting has continued to grow, but that growth seems to be slowing down and some analysts expect "SMS erosion" to hit Verizon and AT&T by 2014. The obvious culprit is mobile internet: social networking apps, BBM, iMessage and a host of other 'free' options, but you won't find carriers complaining -- data contract ARPUs suit them just fine.
A closer look at revenues in free-to-play MMOs
The free-to-play business model in the MMO industry is one that lets users play a game for free in hopes that a percentage of that userbase will opt to embrace microtransactions, allowing F2P game operators to potentially bring in more revenue per month than they would maintain through subscription fees. We periodically see announcements of yearly revenue from some of the larger companies, but these figures are typically announcements of average revenue per paying user (ARPPU), emphasis on 'paying'. But how much money are free-to-play MMOs really making? This is the subject of an article at Gamasutra written by Paul Hyman titled, 'What Are The Rewards Of 'Free-To-Play' MMOs?" Hyman catches up with Raph Koster (Metaplace), Daniel James from Three Rings Design (Puzzle Pirates), and Jeremy Liew from Lightspeed Venture Partners (a funding source for F2P MMOs) to discuss the microtransaction model.
Alltel sees huge data growth, too
Alltel announced its second quarter earnings this week, and first, the bad news: despite a 10 percent improvement in revenue year over year, the number five carrier actually lost $69.9 million, thanks largely to increases in interest costs on its debt and write offs associated with the absorption of an affiliate last year. Now, onto the good news: like most of its competitors, Alltel saw huge gains in data revenue over the same period -- some 45 percent, to be exact, or $8.18 out of the $54.42 ARPU they're currently posting. They've also added close to 320,000 net subscribers in the quarter, so all things considered, we've got to believe Verizon's still happy with its investment -- assuming it ends up going through, of course.
