"Microsoft had previously offered up the idea of microtransactions in early 2005, as a feature of the new Xbox Live Marketplace prior to the launch of the Xbox 360. The platform holder played microtransactions up as
a new revenue stream for publishers and developers. At the same time, Microsoft called it a boon for players, who didn't have to spend $5, $10, or $20 for bundles of content they didn't want. Instead, they could directly buy what they wanted for $1 to $5.
"Generally if you do anything less than $5, you end up eating up the bulk of that $5 in transaction fees," said Xbox Live general manager Cam Ferroni told
Reuters at the time. "At the heart of it'll be a points-like system where you buy points and then use those points to make purchases."
"Not only do you have to sweep away the distinction between virtual and real, you have to stop looking at video games as a toy and start looking at them as an entertainment service," Synthetic Worlds author and Indiana University professor Edward Castronova said in the article. This is one of the earlier mentions of the concept of games-as-a-service.
Microsoft itself offered a winter-themed outfit for Kameo: Elements of Power for $2.50, alongside new maps for Perfect Dark Zero and new cars for Project Gotham Racing 3. None of these early microtransactions took off in a major way, but it was all about Microsoft showing a proof of concept to other publishers."
Loot boxes are a trend that the game industry has heartily bought into in 2017. They've been around for almost a decade in the massively-multiplayer online s...
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