Turbine Looking to Microtransactions for New Revenue Source

Turbine is one of many competing MMORPG publishers struggling to make headway against market-leader World of Warcraft. On Jan 1st, Turbine announced a new position that suggests a major change coming to Turbine's current business model. Turbine is looking to hire a Microtransactions/eCommerce Manager who "will be responsible for delivering and maximizing the revenue derived from Turbine’s micro-transaction-based in-game store." No such store currently exists in any of Turbine's ongoing MMORPG titles, which include Asheron's Call, Dungeons & Dragons Online, and The Lord of the Rings Online.

The change, though, will be for an upcoming title. A post from a Turbine's community representative at the LOTRO official forums states that the new position will not affect any of their existing titles."We know the recent job listing has caused a bit of a stir, but please be aware that this posting is for an unannounced future project. We appreciate the thoughts and feedback on both sides thus far," said Sapience, one of Turbine's Online Community Managers. 

Turbine has previously run their titles according to the traditional Western model of generating triple-A MMO revenue, which requires players only to pay a monthly subscription fee in order to play. Generally this revenue model stands on its own, without the ability to purchase in-game virtual goods. Currently, only Sony Entertainment Online is experimenting with virtual goods integration in the new Station Cash service available in the otherwise subscription-based MMOs EverQuest and EverQuest II.

Virtual goods primarily play a role in MMORPGs developed by Eastern companies situated in nations like Korea, China, and Japan. That a Western company like Turbine is clearly going to adopt some type of virtual goods model in an upcoming project is a major development. Free-to-play virtual goods-oriented MMOs are frequently more popular with casual players, and the overall trend of the MMORPG market in the past few years has been toward making already-popular games even more accessible. With more triple-A publishers and games looking at microtransactions for revenue, that growth is sure to spread.