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What’s the ROI on marketing in Second Life? After attacking the topic from a couple directions (most SL users seem receptive, but so far, are largely unimpressed with existing attempts), we finally have some concrete numbers to work with, at least on the more relevant metric of unique visitors.

So how does anywhere from 6,454 to, well, zero, grab you?

That’s the spread of weekly visitors to real world corporate sites in Second Life, according to SL demographics expert Tateru Nino. Every Monday on my Second Life blog, she reports on the number of Residents to visit these locations; the world’s dynamic map enables her to headcount actual visitors, and with some common sense extrapolation (sampling numerous peak and offpeak use periods), winds up with a fairly accurate estimate of total uniques.

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When technology analyst group Gartner recently asserted that “80 percent of active Internet users (and Fortune 500 companies) will have a ‘second life’, but not necessarily in Second Life” by 2011, a lot of people jumped the gun and assumed 8 out of 10 of all Net users would be in a virtual world in four short years. Not exactly, Gartner Chief of Research Steve Prentice tells us. “Firstly,” says Prentice, “this statement refers to ‘active’ Internet users– a subtlety missed in much of the subsequent reporting.”

Their actual estimate, as it turns out, is decidedly less expansive, but about as impressive, and that’s by conscious choice. The statement was meant, says Prentice, as “a wake-up call to the CIO and CEOS out there that this is not a game, just sort of messing around. It’s interesting [and] we think it’s going to big.”
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Online worlds on the Internet? That’s so last month ago. Judging by recent initiatives from Sun and IBM, the latest trend is a corporate-controlled, business-centric virtual world architected for internal use only– call it the intranet metaverse. In Sun’s case, it’s MPK20, a “a virtual 3D environment in which employees can accomplish their real work, share documents, and meet with colleagues using natural voice communication.”

The idea is to bring remote workers in Sun’s worldwide offices together into a single embodied space, “where the spacial layout of the 3D world coupled with the immersive audio provides strong cognitive cues that enhance collaboration.” (Via 3pointD, where blogger Mark Wallace has worthwhile commentary.) In IBM’s case, it’s a rough-and-ready 3D environment created by their Innovate Quick team, using the Torque graphics engine from Garage Games.

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Om just passed along the news that Skype just launched a Game Developer Program, replete with their own branded Game Channel, and a dev kit so folks can create third party games that run over Skype, and make them money. This is a great idea bound to succeed– rather, it would have been, if it had been launched a few years ago. Now, they’re competing in an already crowded market.

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Computer and Videogames’ website is purportedly confirming what has just been an incessant rumor up to now: Vivendi game studio/World of Warcraft developer Blizzard Entertainment will announce an MMO spinoff of their wildly popular Starcraft franchise at the company’s May 19th Worldwide Invitational in South Korea.

I say “purportedly” because the CVG article only cites unnamed sources, and I don’t want to jump the gun; I’m checking with Blizzard’s PR department now, and will report what they say, if anything. Then again, Blizzard has been running help wanted ads for developers of an unnamed “Next-Gen MMO” on its site, these last few weeks, and Starcraft is the other jewel in the company’s IP crown.

Assuming the company does confirm, is a Starcraft MMO a good business move? For the Asian market, absolutely, but it’s hard to imagine it would reach anything like the global success of World of Warcraft.

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David Cole of DFC Intelligence, a game industry expert for years, has been a guiding source for me for years, and he just revealed some astonishing numbers about the MMOG market:

“I can let you be the first person we tell that we forecast the worldwide MMOG market going from $2.2 billion in 2006 to $5.9 billion in 2012,” he e-mails me.

These figures are part of an upcoming DFC report, and they are bullish in the extreme. For proportion’s sake, bear in mind that the entire computer/videogame industry is currently a $7.4 billion business.

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The debate over the value of advertising in the metaverse just got a lot more interesting. Earlier this month, I noted a survey which suggested that real world marketing in Second Life wasn’t working. That still seems largely true, but now a new study from Seattle-based Global Marketing Insite strongly implies that it’s not from lack of interest— which is, according to the firm’s report, surprisingly strong.

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In an announcement that shouldn’t surprise regular GigaOM readers in the slightest (warning signs emerged as far back as last February, and reached crescendo pitch in November and December), Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. just announced that CEO Ken Kutaragi, the “father of the Playstation”, will leave his post in June and become an “honorary chairman of SCEI”.

By most appearances, his new title will be an “emeritus” position in the sense attributed to Rupert Murdoch, when he showed a Newscorp exec the door: “The ‘e’ means you’ve been given the elbow and the ‘meritus’ means that you bloody deserve it!” Unsurprisingly, most analysts attribute the departure to the Playstation 3’s poor performance against the Wii, and worst blow of all, as compared to the Xbox 360.

Not entirely deserved, however, for despite the numerous missteps in its development, pricing, and marketing, the PS3 ultimately failed because Kutaragi succeeded with the PS2 so well. More

By the middle of last year, it was attracting half a million unique visitors monthly; fast forward to last month, and that number is two million. It’s not a traditional MMO like World of Warcraft; it’s not a social game like There; it doesn’t originate from Europe like Habbo Hotel or from Asia like Cyworld. You haven’t heard of it partly because the San Jose company has kept a low profile.

Another reason you’re still likely in the dark: it’s primarily designed for teens. But with online worlds all sizes and styles poised for an explosion, you’ll almost certainly hear a lot more about it soon.

It’s called Gaia Online, and as a guy on a giant crane behind us tore down the giant Web 2.0 conference banner in Moscone West, I had a chance to sit down with CEO Craig Sherman— formerly COO with Myfamily.com, and an Entrepreneur-in-Residence with Benchmark Capital, a main funder of Gaia— for a furious round of questioning. How did Gaia grow so large so quickly so stealthily?

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As a gamer, Roger Ehrenberg is a fan of the Xbox 360; unfortunately for Peter Moore, however, his day job is President of a Wall Street analysis firm. And the investor’s perspective is decidedly at odds with the gamer’s. To wit, as he writes on his blog:

“Gaming has been a disastrous endeavor for Microsoft, particularly from an investment perspective…” [Emph. mine]

His argument for a statement of such face-punching boldness is threefold: basically, 1) after blowing $21 billion over five years on their Home & Entertainment division, all Microsoft really has for its efforts is $5.4 billion in total operating losses, 2) the Xbox line has simply failed to take off in Japan, heart of the console industry, and 3) despite their stated intentions, the 360 has failed to diversify its audience much beyond hardcore gamers who own HDTVs.

It’s a solid analysis– read it all here. But is it correct? Short term, maybe. To take Microsoft’s side (and if I won’t, who will?), I can suggest three big picture rejoinders:

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