[cjenkins]

I'm always curious how Magic Online (http://www.mtgonline.com) gets left out of these virtual goods conversations. It had an 8 year celebration this past July and by a rough calculation (http://robowarp.com/2010/10/29/another-revenue-datapoint/) was pulling in 150k per day during release events for Scars.

Ever since I started tracking news on virtual goods it's always boggled my mind that it never gets mentioned. Perhaps it's just a little bit too different in that there's an incredibly small free portion and a huge premium portion and it's a direct translation of a physical product.

(I digress some but they seem to have the ideal customer breakdown. Very few freeloaders and a huge number of people who pay ~$15 to draft each time.)

[gamble]

I know it's a significant chunk of MtG revenue, but they're hobbled by antagonism from paper-card dealers. Promoting MtGO too heavily makes the paper dealers fearful of cannibalization. So far they've maintained the peace by focusing MtGO strictly on hardcore, tournament-oriented players. It's profitable, but so niche that most people aren't aware of them.