In an anti-climatic ending to a much anticipated, but not occurring bidding frenzy, Medusa's Head finally sold today for an end bid of PED 300,009 to Qetesh Qetesh Qetesh ((aka Akoz) who represents a group of investors). Medusa's Head was estimated by some players to bring in around 2 million PED when the auction was first announced, and surely there will be a bit of scratching of heads going on today at the First Planet Company (FPC) offices in Gothenburg. After all, the Medusa's Head auction announcement stated that deposits specifically intended for the estate should at least be PED 500,000 (USD 50,000), which the bidding never even reached. Compare this to the price that Club NEVERDIE (CND) (now known as F.O.M.A. Fortuna) recently changed hands for. The total for that was 6,350,000 PED (or USD 635,000, with the largest single bid being PED 3,350,000 (or USD 335,000)). Last year, Crystal Palace (CP) sold for PED 3,300,000 (Or USD 330,000 PED). CP offered 4 hunting-only domes, and later on was extended with 2 Iron Challenge missions, which were not available nor announced when Crystal Palace went up for auction. The biggest CND bid brought the winning bidder 8 huntable as well as minable domes, along with naming rights to the asteroid, and the remainder of the apartments and shops that were left unsold. In contrast, Medusa's Head is a collection of 8 land areas, 24 shops, 24 apartments, 2 unique iron challenges, and a hangar. Excluding the other real estate, surely Qetesh got himself and his investors a bargain at PED 50,000 per land area. If the shops, apartments and maybe the hangar will sell, potentially the investment could be fully recouped with the investors looking at pure tax profit afterwards. The big question, though, is what this means for the prices of other real estates within the Entropia Universe, and particularly those on Calypso. MindArk, and afterwards FPC, have always been able to use the major real estate sales as cheap promotion material. First with Treasure Island, then Club NEVERDIE, the bank licenses, Crystal Palace, and earlier this year Club NEVERDIE again. It seems as if this strategy has run its course. Let's take a moment to try and see if it is possible to find an explanation to this year's sales dud. First and foremost, the world is still suffering from the financial crisis. Real estate prices have dipped all over the world, with many forced foreclosures taking place. At this very moment, the crisis does not seem to be over yet, and banks still show great reluctance to hand out credit. This leaves many people still insecure about their real-life homes (and in many cases, their jobs, too), and could be a prime explanation of the real life crisis echoing on in virtual reality. As a result, prices drop as people have less money to spend on such luxuries as virtual items. Perhaps that is not a bad thing, with some of the prices going through the roof, and this merely being a bit of sanity returning to the (Entropia Universe) markets. Another possible explanation is that with the upcoming other planets (Next Island is due to be released within the next two weeks, and Planet Arkadia is set to be launched within the first half of 2011), investors are reluctant to drop large amounts of liquid PEDs into what could potentially be a risky investment. If the new planets turn out to offer more fun for the buck, potentially a large amount of the existing player base (which is supposed to bring in the taxes to recoup the investment) might migrate, leaving Calypso (and thus Medusa) with a potentially long ROI. Yet a different suggestion could be that the Planet Calypso real estate market is simply over-saturated. As we speak, there are dozens of land areas available, not counting CND and CP, with yet more handed out in the recent Merry Mayhem end-of-year competition. The number of active players that would potentially frequent these areas in the meantime does not seem to have increased to the extent that adding 10 more land areas would make these areas all profitable or sustainable, so perhaps the market is just oversaturated, and as anyone who was introduced to basic economics can explain, if supply outweighs demand, it's prices that will drop. Some in the community suggest that perhaps the investor conglomerate simply bought out other interested parties, or the other parties joined the Qetesh bid instead of competing with it, thereby greatly reducing the amount of potential bidders with enough money to make a bid on Medusas Head, and thus securing a relative bargain. Which one of these suggestions holds most water, we will leave for you to discuss. Whether FPC will be releasing one of their usual press releases announcing the sale will remain to be seen. Feel free to point out flaws or inaccuracies in this article, or add your own thoughts and opinions.
Hear hear to a new era of investment alliances. MA & FPC will have to work hard to make it worthwhile for one person to want to own these investments for here on in.
Interesting development. Even more interesting having in mind the # of PED paid for CND recently (and the controversy surrounding the deal). I vote for over-saturation of the LA market due to active players/# of LAs ratio rather decreasing. And of course future LA's on planets close to be launched lead to anticipated prices. The... mh... move of Club NEVERDIE from Calypso to Next Island might have highlighted this fact.
I have my hopes up, that the new planets will be a lot different from the ones we know now, and therefor also will be able to attract their own player base ourside the Universe. I also have hopes, that the new Planets will understand the great importance of advertising their planets on different games related news sites to make this happen. In that case, I do not see they will head the same problems, as I'm afraid the LA's on Calypso might get. The relase of the new planets this year will also course a natural fload of Entropians to flee from Calypso to the new areas. That again might course problems for the Land Owners on the First planets. No doubt, at this point there ARE too many Landareas and too less players. There is something in Danish called a 'full' market (dunno the English Expression), and I feel the Universe reached that now. Anyway, gratz for achieving Medusas Head - and good luck to all excisting and future Landowners.
This shows that MA/FPC should focus on micropayments instead. Get the ingame market working, atract people to their game and then they will earn more money. Small parts from each of us is worth much more than one single auction like this one.
They also need to release more DNA parts in both mining and hunting, I can't see who this wouldn't benefit?
Well I can't say I didn't expect a low price like this. To many LA's and to little players, marked is saturated (think that's the proper English word Lykke). I really wonder what the other planets are planning, I think this sale proves that is might not be worth the effort of creating a LA. How many people have been working to create Medusa?? Was it worth the 30.000 dollar and the use of the extra servers and electricity they use?? 30.000 dollar is maybe 300 or 400 hours of work, my guess is that it might have taken a bit longer to make the islands, what do you guys think??
The worth of it cannot be placed in time spending making it, but the amount of players 'using' the LA's - hunting and mining. That's when we will see, if it was worth the money, and if he even bought it as cheap as it seems :) - or ... if he paid too much ...
No Lykke I mean was it worth it to FPC to build the Medusa islands. Pretty sure Quetesh made a pretty nice deal there with 16 people to buy it that cheap, but I'm thinking FPC is banging their heads against the wall right now, I think they exacted to get around 250k dollar for it.
well I donno, maybe ma will learn a lesson here...but I don't think so...wouldn't be surprised if hey make another island and sell that in the summer or something hoping to get more money
Here's a list of investors involved in it that we know of so far: * Qetesh * Squallx * FruSnabel * Divinity * Ionar * Mark Rufen Power / Gallyon Luckycharm Sundstrand
"staturated" is probably the term you seek. I think there is alot of over analysis of the situation. the real world fincancal backdrop is actually alot better than it was 12 months ago when Buzz brought CP and we've had the sell off of the CND domes since then too. thats the biggest red herring. new planets, coordinated player conspiracy and too many LA are trying too hard to find a explaination too (expect the former probably ruled out Deathifier's involvement). The simplest explaination offered seems to be that Qetesh and co had a big war chest, most other serious contenders didnt think they'd be able to compete and/or thought another would step in. With Star, Deathifier, Neverdie and Neovixen out, there are only so many others with big ped or access to it (though Buzz seemed to come from left field last year). its just a miss calculation, Skippie and few pals are probably quite pissed they didnt have a go now, but maybe sidetracked by MM and thought someone else would compete with Qetesh. but then did anyone have 2.5m Ped handy? people knew/estimated what was the spending power of Qetesh, with Squallx in the wings, and deceided it was more than their resources.
That one ;) But really good article and diagram and I think its really safe to say these are all valid points and probably all contributing factors.... The last one packed the punch though as despite some of the others, for example the riskyness of investing in a planet that seems to be spreading its population forever thinner into the expanding universe, people still seem to be throwing in mass sums of money for these big wack items... Still, I doubt FPC are celebrating... I wonder how much the man power outlay to create Medusa in the first place was...? Any 3D graphics artists got any ideas? Interesting times Wist
Well I'm pretty sure development costs of the Medusa's Head did not exceed the saleprice of $30K. My estimate would be 5 ppl in 2 weeks(about 400 manhours) could make that happen, given all the tools are in place. Ofcourse this does not involve testing/quality control, but then again we are talking MA/FPC here so they probably skipped that part. ;)
I would go with over-saturation of the market. There are a lot of abandoned or minimally maintained LAs on Amerthera now anyway. Also, an island off the coast of PA doesn't exactly have the investor appeal of a space station or asteroid. For mining, the resources are not really worth going to Medusa except for the solis. As for the mobs, again nothing spectacular. If it were possible to build a dome and fill it with aurli or dasp then maybe Medusa would be more attractive. I think Qetesh et al have their hands full trying to get people to buy apartments and so on. And then there is the timing. Maybe MA was hoping for a big announcement at CES in Las Vegas going on now. Concerning FPC, I think the shock of the sale at 10% of what they imagined will be softened by the suicidal finance department members who try to jump to their deaths from a high building only to land in snow.
FYI, here's an almost complete list of investors, quoted from Qetesh at PCF: "Bling, melman2002, M Rufen Power, skorp, qetesh, squall, ionar, Radio, FruSnabel, Divinity, MRmP, Rhagnar, Darkaner, Redwolf + 2 ppl that didn't yet agree to having their name published." While my own contribution at best can be described as modest, I think we can do something cool and fun with this estate. It seems to be a nice bunch of people.
Perhaps the owners should try to revive Champions League at Medusa now that the asteroid isn't really suitable these days. Just an idea, like. Edit - I've just gone into game and it looks as though even the smallest of the Medusa LAs is approximately three times the area of any one asteroid dome. If you're able to put a mix of mobs in each LA this might be viable, and it only need tie-up one LA at a time. I'll leave you to chew over that thought.
