Hello Kitty Online to Get Majorly Monetized With PlaySpan When Free-to-Play MMO Launches This Year

Hello Kitty Online, the upcoming free-to-play MMO based on the gargantuan franchise of the same name, has selected PlaySpan to handle its monetization services when it launches commercially sometime this year. Players will be able to buy Hello Kitty virtual goodies in the game’s Item Mall via PlaySpan’s UltimatePay service, handling transactions via credit cards, PayPal, mobile, and its pre-paid retail card sold in tens of thousands of locations across the US. With all those payment methods, Sanrio anticipates at least 3-8% of their players will buy Hello Kitty virtual goods (since those rates are the general industry standard for online games.)
“We would expect to be on the higher end of the scale or even higher [of that monetization rate],” Robert Ferrari, Vice President of Publishing & Business Development for Sanrio Digital, tells me.