Pink Poogle Toy Forum

I just found this article at RedHerring.com (a reputable technology business site) that outlines Neopets' new NeoCash plan. The link is http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx? ... dServices#

For those who don't want to click, here's the article in its entirety:

Neopets to Sell Premium Items: Virtual pet powerhouse to start taking real cash for digital goodies.

June 20, 2007
By Ryan Olson

Viacom subsidiary Neopets, a popular online community targeted at kids and teens, on Wednesday said it plans to begin selling virtual items for real money.

The news comes as the MTV property searches for ways to expand its business amid a flurry of activity in online games, communities, and virtual worlds. Virtual items could become a strong secondary revenue stream for Neopets, which until now has capitalized on its large audience by selling banner advertisements.

Neopets currently has more than 40 million registered users around the world, and nearly 12 million unique visitors come to the site each month to adopt virtual pets, play games, and socialize. Neopets launched in 1999 and was acquired by Viacom in June 2005 for $160 million (see Viacom Nabs Neopets: $160M).

On June 28, the site will begin selling virtual items in online boutiques that are part of the beta version of its new NC Mall. Visitors from the U.S. and Canada will be able to view and purchase goodies for their pets like sparkling ruby slippers, wings of flame, and twinkling faerie tiaras using a new virtual currency dubbed Neocash.

Neopets users will initially only be able to purchase Neocash via Paypal, but the company plans to expand to include things like prepaid cards available at retail. International versions of the NC Mall are also in the works.

Neocash will coexist with Neopoints, a currency Neopets users can already earn by playing games and completing quests. Players also use Neopoints to buy digital items, but Neopets representatives said these points will not be exchangeable with the new Neocash.

The move was designed to give users another option for customizing their characters, said Neopets Senior Vice President and General Manager Kyra Reppen.

Big Money

The market for virtual items such as clothing and accessories, online real estate, and game characters represents a rapidly growing segment of the online game business and could be worth as much as $3.5 billion by 2011, Ted Pollak, president of video game investment firm EE Fund Management said in a recent interview (see Sparter Opens Virtual Money Market).

DFC Intelligence predicts the larger worldwide market for online games, which includes virtual items, could top $13 billion by 2012, up from $4.5 billion in 2006.

Neopets is working with Korean online gaming specialist Nexon to handle the virtual item sales. In November the two companies announced a partnership that includes support for Nexon’s efforts in the U.S. and Neopets’ international expansion (see MTV to Drive Kart Rider to the U.S.).

Nexon is just one of many Asian companies with years of experience selling virtual items in online video games. In 2005 the company posted worldwide revenues of $230 million, 85 percent of which came from virtual items.

The company said earlier this year that North American players spent more than $1.6 million on virtual items in its fantasy online role-playing game Maple Story during the month of February alone (see Is Asia the Next Hollywood?).

I remember this being discussed some time ago...but for all I've known it's coming, and have had time to prepare myself for this new way to suck cash out of people's pockets, I still don't like it.
I think(or maybe hope) it'll make little to no profit.

I had a big ol' rant about NeoCash over on viewtopic.php?f=3&t=33863&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=60 . Maybe I should move my grouching to this thread.

That article is interesting. I thought they might try to justify NeoCash by emphasising how they have to recoup the expense of running a huge and popular site like Neopets, but it looks like at least to fellow businesspeople they're being quite plain that the advertising does that already and NeoCash is a pure cashing-in venture.

What gets me is that you can't give NeoCash as a gift - you have to buy it yourself using PayPal or these retail cards they're talking about. Are they expecting the children in that '12 million regular visitors' figure to spend their pocket money on these digital items?

Hmm... I can't imagine why you can't do that. I bet they'll change it soon. Their profit would increase a lot by allowing people to buy it for each other.

If gifting points/items comes out eventually, I bet in no time it'll turn into a huge scamming opportunity. I know that once gifting came out in Tricksteronline, everyone out there was selling items for millions of in-game money. I know a few people actually did it without scamming, but it was against the rules, even though the gm's didn't really seem to notice or care.

Then... the whole thing exploded. People charged huge amounts of points to their account and started gifting random people. Then the scammers called all the points used as fraudulent activity and caused all the people that recieved the items to be charged for whatever they got.

As long as they have a better system of doing things, this shouldn't happen. They should keep all these situations in mind before they try start this.

The only problem I see with neocash is that in the future I am afraid that the majority of clothing available will only be the neocash stuff, with a few feeble examples being attainable through using neopoints. Basically, all the very cool stuff will be bought with real money, while everyone else gets junk. I surely hope it isn't this way. That is, if they release a tiara to the neostore, they should release an equally cool looking, but different tiara to be available if you have enough neopoints. If they release wings of fire to the neostore, then they should have wings of light or dark faerie wings or another type of wing we can get with neopoints. The artwork for the store and the neopoint art work should be comparable. That is all future items going into the store will look good, but the art of the neopoint stuff shouldn't look like a three year old drew it, either.

Well, Viacom certainly wins the "easiest cash made ever" award. Giving something free for real life money! Nothing could possibly go wrong!*

* Except for the complete collapse of the economy.


I will never pay for anything related to Neopets. The very second a Daddy's Little Girl can sign up and instantly have a higher net worth than me, I'm out.

The thing that gets to me is the hypocrisy of it all. For years now, players have asked, begged, and cajoled the staff to make wearable clothes for our pets. Each time, we were told that it would be too hard, too massive an undertaking to redraw the clothes and/or pets.

Then Viacom steps up to the plate... It is fairly obvious that the whole purpose of making the pets customizable was for this NeoCash deal. And suddenly it becomes easy (or profitable) to do the redraws, etc.

A bunch of corporate whooey, if you ask me!

Despite believing Neopets is a giant evil corporation with a stone instead of a heart and an itchy trigger finger when it comes to freezing people, I think they'll be quick to stop large-scale manipulation of Neocash. Their response to major problems is usually to stop all transactions(think TP glitches) and sort things out.

It's funny that people think companies (or perhaps anyone at all) should not be able to make a profit... Or that everything should be equal for everybody, because it would be unfair otherwise. In that case you should've rooted for communism instead of capitalism

People always complain when something comes out that costs money: Premium, the Mobile/Lutari thing, and now NeoCash. As far as I read it, they don't force anything on you (unlike the government with their taxes..). You can play Neopets for free. For Free. Not even a monthly fee like most MMORPG's. If you want more, or you want exclusivity, you have to pay for it. You do not lose anything if you don't pay for it, so I don't see any reason to be upset about it.

Of course they need to make money - but from what I can gather they are already making a profit. Government taxes are necessary to maintain the public services we rely on; likewise, advertising is necessary to offset the cost of running Neopets. The point is not that providing optional paid-for extras is wrong in principle. Lutari Island was just disappointing because everyone was excited about it, thinking it would be free. If you don't pay for it, you lose nothing. The point here, as I see it, is that NeoCash DOES 'punish' those of us who can't or don't want to pay, in two ways:

1) It diverts resources away from severely neglected parts of the site.
2) It has forced Customisation on everyone, which lots of people are very unhappy about because of how their pets look now, and we are concerned that getting stuff to make Customisation worthwhile will cost money. Doubtless they will continue to release free wearables, but if they're taking money for most of the coolest stuff, it's in their interest not to provide too many nifty-looking alternatives that can be obtained without paying real money.

And that's quite apart from the ethical questions of taking real money from children in exchange for virtual items that expire.

It wouldn't be so bad if they concentrated on putting right all the things that are already broken or neglected, and THEN added optional extras for real currency.

Neopets is a children's site... And kids are not supposed to have paypal or credit cards, and not be able to make purchases on the internet or over the phone.

I guess they are targeting ... YOU!.

Q: If you purchase something with money, does that make it a commodity you can sell for money later? (ie. ebay)

Those lawyerbots must have spent years on this.

Other sites have pay-for items, and I've never had problems with it. Sites such as Subeta and Gaia Online, among others.

It's a good way to earn money easily, and it helps people like me who are willing to pay get items we don't have the time to earn otherwise. It'll throw off the economy a bit, but neopets is so huge that it'll recover swiftly. It might not be the same, but eh..

From my experience, there will be a handful of really nice items you can only get by paying for, but there will still be several nice ones you WON'T be able to buy - Neopets isn't stupid enough to make everything nice cash-only, because they'd lose a lot of players that way.

I wouldn't bet on Neopets not being that stupid, Moonlight Flower. They've done plenty of equally stupid things.

People would still complain about it even if everything on the site was alright. But I guess that's just human nature; we're never content with what we have