Extreme Region Price Decrease - Real Reasons

I don't know where to post this - it does have questions - so I'm positing here. Hope to get a healthy discussion going, whether you agree or disagreee with what's written.

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Very slick manuever by the Linden bunch! Who is going to complain about cheaper real estate?! (Besides a handful of existing sim owners). I think, typically, they have other motives that they will not make us privy to.

Jack Linden made reference to the LL business model in his Blog... I'd love to be privy to the part of the business model (and not to mention the minutes of recent Linden meetings) that have resulted in this seemingly bizarre decision.

In any economic model, it would be insanity to impose such an extreme fundamental change to the system. The ramifications are huge. This type of blunt solution to an inflation problem is what you'd see by Mugabe in Zimbabwee... with the same foreseable results.

Just as people in RL would be dancing in the streets if the government imposed a law on developers and the real estate market resulting in all new property prices to drop by 40%, so will "new" buyers (newbies and first time land buyers, those who can now magically expand their land holdings, as well as those now magically able to buy their own new sims).

Don't forget that LL has been pushing new sim prices up - not pushing or easing them down - until this sudden reversal.

As a multiple sim owner with the intention of buying more sims, you'd think I'd be happy about a 40% discount to buy a new sim. Should I be happy that overnight the value of my existing sims is now less than half of what I paid for them? Should I be happy that natural market forces have been turned on their head and I must now compete, in the SL business world, against those who can suddenly essentially get a 2 for one deal on sims? If tier drops too... then a total calamity will ensue.

Well, for those people dancing in the streets about this stuff, in any economic model, it all exentually balances out - which is to say, exeryone will get f'd to some degree by this blunt neanderthal change by LL... well, except for Linden Labs... LOL

So what is the real inspiration behind this extreme change?

Well, Jack Linden also made references to technology costs... In the 2D world of the World Wide Web, we've seen web hosting costs decrease and online storage costs decrease... at a natural progressive rate. The cost of hardware to produce a sim (region) on a class 5 server, would have dropped roughly by about 50% since class 5 servers were introduced in SL. I've always wondered why those decreases haven't slowly trickled down to sim buyers in a manner similar to what we see in the 2D online world (less cost to have a website and less cost for website data storage). Talk about an extreme correction by LL to more realistic tech costs.

The real reasons for the bizarre massive price drop on class 5 regions
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Let's see some specualtion everyone. Here's mine:

1. Class 6 Servers On The Way

Couldn't this sudden change perhaps be a Class 6 server omen? A class 5 region price adjustment in preparation of the release of class 6 (or equivalent) regions... say, for the price of about... $1675 per region?

2. Not enough income for the LL corporation to support their RL plans.

OK, inutitively, that may seem contradictive with lowering sim prices. One thing is certain, there are a substantial number of people who try but don't buy when it comes to SL. Making it substantially more affordable to have a 3D presence (ie, own property in SL) would attract more people to a longer term presence in SL. The same principle can be applied to established SL residents who would spend more on property.. ultimately increasing sim sales substantially.

3.Your turn....

The healthy discussion has been going on here at this misleadingly titled thread:

/327/9f/251771/1.html

Join the fun.

I would discuss what you wrote here, but there's not much for me to say other than I agree with you 100%.