Mochi Media has officially announced the full launch of its Mochi Coins virtual currency for Flash games, which was rolled out in select games late last month. Ordinarily Mochi Media focuses on serving advertising to over 14,000 games made by its 10,000 client Flash developers and featured on over 30,000 portal sites. With Mochi Coins, clients will be able to sell virtual goods and other microtransaction items in their games. Revenue generated by ads in Flash games is infamously low, so with Mochi Coins the entire Mochi Media network may have a chance to become dramatically more profitable.
"Mochi Media's mission has always been to fuel the creativity of Flash games, and Mochi Coins represents the natural next step for us to build upon our success with analytics and monetization through ads," said Jameson Hsu, Chief Mochi at Mochi Media. "Microtransactions are well-suited to the emerging class of premium Flash games that are immersive, high quality and keep you playing over and over."
Right now users can purchase Mochi Coins with PayPal, credit cards, or by accepting offers from Super Rewards. In the future, Mochi plans on supporting mobile pay and issuing prepaid cards to traditional retailers. Revenue share lets developers keep 60% of each in-game microtransaction for themselves, with another small fee going to the maintainers of web sites where Mochi Media client games are featured.
Last month the main game featuring Mochi Coins for payments was SAS: Zombie Assault 2, but the full rollout adds Mochi Coins to the games Castle Wars Multiplayer, ClickSim, Crazy Go Nuts 2, Hitstick 4, Cahoots, Little Farm, Minions on Ice, Plant Pong Deluze, Pupzzle, Shadez 2, Space Pips, Twin Shot 2, and Windosill.
Mochi has also disclosed more information about the initial performance of Mochi Coins in SAS: Zombie Assault 2. Since the microtransactions were enabled in late June, users purchased weapons packs and upgrades 50,000 times. The game's revenue skyrocketed to $7-10 dollars per every thousand plays during the beta period, a huge gain over traditional Flash ad click payouts. Once developers get over the relative novelty of virtual goods in Flash games, it seems very likely that they'll begin turning to this model to get the monetization that's always eluded Flash titles in the past.






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