Why This Policy is All About Mainland Prices

Yeah it's crazy. I've had people in my store that seemed very upset that we had no plans at all to stop renting openspaces. For a start the details of the new deal are far from set in stone and besides 2 months is plenty of time to tighten my belt and find people willing to pay the new price for what is still going to be a popular product.

I appreciate that some shoestring or non-profit operations might have to close because of the extra costs but there are plenty of people out there who'll pay extra for the benefits of an OpenSpace sim.

I totally disagree.

* LL raises monthly fees from $195 to $295 and after a lot of BAWWing they grandfathered in the old fee.
* LL lowered the buy price for full sims from $1600 to $1000. After a lot of BAWWing they gave everyone who recently bought a sim a free openspace.

Can't think of any other examples but I'm sure they exist. They consistently make these broad aggressive changes and then wait for the outcry and offer a few concessions to the loadest whiners.

While there's a mainland element here, I don't think the corporate bean counters were focused on propping up the mainland prices and they certainly weren't interested in having openspace users switch enmasse to mainland.

This price hike had to be sold to the board as a reliable way to quickly raise additional revenue on the product itself. No doubt they rationalized that a sufficient segment of openspace users will continue to use the product at the higher price and the 67% price increase will offset the overall loss in OS sims. They also rationalized a few other 'positive' to convince the powers that this was a win - win proposition:

- Most estate owners who pull out OS's will covert them to full sims rather than lose their initial investments and those who rented OS's will likely switch over to large sized plots on those sims.

- A small but significant segment of residents who have grown to enjoy private island living by renting OS's will decide to purchase a full sim themselves.

- A sizable segment of former OS users will revert to mainland and many of those will choose to purchase premium manicured sim plots (i.e. Bay City, Nautlius) that sell for 50,000 to 100,000L a pop or they'll want expensive ocean front land that approximates their former OS look.

There's only one problem of course - it's a total delusion that requires swallowing large quanitites of Kool-Aid. Even in an economic boon, this would be a risky proposition but in an economic recession there is an urgent need to reduce spending (esp. the disposable income kind) and the nature of this transparent and underhanded money grab is a hostile invitation to do so.

Not only will the OS market collapse along with the associated revenue, but at best, those former OS residents who decide they still want land will reluctantly satisfy themselves with much smaller land holdings with far lower tier or rent payments.

Estate owners who convert their OS's to full sims will find there is insufficient buyers and they well end up having to fire sale those sims.

Standard mainland prices will continue to wilt while Linden continues to push high priced themed mainland sims like Nautilus. Those are certainly making money in initial sales for Linden but the long term tier revenue is going to trend downward since those plots are sold with double prim allotments. If they continue to flood the market with themed sims, that golden goose will die too and it's probably close to doing so already.