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Today, they’re worth quite a bit less. The tokens are in-game items which can be purchased for $20 and exchanged for gold or game time, with their value in gold determined by the market. Blizzard said last month that it would set an initial value and then let it fluctuate based on supply and demand. And fluctuate it has, with the Token shedding a full quarter of its worth in gold in a single day.
At launch, a $20 Token was initially valued at 30,000 gold, and actually pushed beyond that in the first few hours after release. But then it started to go down, down, steadily down, and now, according to wowtoken.info, your $20 Token now equates to 22,405 gold, more than a quarter less than the starting price.
The slump is not entirely surprising. As VentureBeat points out, the great likelihood is that players rushed to buy Tokens as soon as they were launched, then dumped them on the auction house to turn around some quick gold. And it’s not as though 22k is an inconsequential sum, either.
The potentially interesting part is what happens next: If the gold value continues to fall, players could be tempted to forgo their $15 monthly subscription fees in favor of Tokens, tradeable for 30 days of game time, purchased with gold. Will Blizzard take action to stabilize the market? My guess is that they’ll eventually settle into a sub-30k stability, but given how the Diablo 3 real money auction house turned out, a small part of me wonders if maybe WoW Tokens could have unforeseen effects on the way the in-game economy is balanced.
For more info on the WoW token system, follow this link!
Ryan Reynolds revealed the first official promo shot for Deadpool and it is — appropriately — a shot of the merc taking some time to get caught up on current affairs while attending to bodily functions. Well… His current affairs anyway. He’s reading the latest Deadpool comic, #250, which is reported to feature the character’s death.
Eidos Montreal announced the next installment of the Deus Ex series today with a slick CGI trailer. It was announced for PS4, so far no other platforms have been announced.
Its been an interesting few years for UK retailer GAME (hereafter referred to as Game because I’m to lazy to hold down the shift key that much). After emerging back into the public market, the company has seemed to be experiencing positive growth. However, recent data reveals that Game posted a 1.8% decline in pre-tax profits for the 26 weeks to January 26. Actual revenues hit £582.1 million, which is a decrease from last year of 0.7%.
Ok Digmbot, those are numbers. But what do they mean? Well dear reader, all in all Game has taken a hit in profits. Once you do a bunch of math stuff and add in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, the company had about a 16.3% drop from last year. Of course, management had told investors this was coming, so the stock only took a 9% drop when the results were announced.
The departure of CFO Benedict Smith just a few weeks after this profits warning was issued is interesting. Smith as brought out in January 13, which was about 1.5 years before the company returned to the public market. Mr. Smith was actual a private equity veteran, which means someone without much experience in the games world. Naturally, Martyn Gibbs the CEO praised Smith for his contribution to the company, saying in part:
“Benedict has been a key member our management team which has transformed GAME, achieved a successful IPO and driven forward our strategy of being at the heart of the gaming community.”
Gibbs also commented on the challenging Christmas the company recently emerged from and said he remained confident in the company’s strategy.
There are many other factors at work here financially, such as the fact that Game operates with very little capital debt, and that they just acquire eSports team Multi for £20 million, £1.2 of which came directly from the company’s cash. While some may cry that Game is once again sliding into decline, it more seems that they are holding steady, reorganizing and preparing to diversify their business into other markets. And while some may say the end of the age of brick-and-mortar game (no pun intended) stores is coming to and end as digital content purchases rise, don’t forget that you can’t go to Steam and grab a used copy of European Ship Simulator…
