[1] says it was 18% in 2007. I very, very strongly doubt it's gone down. XBLA de-lists games with a Metacritic score below 65 (which is basically impossible) and a conversion rate below 6% (which is apparently really hard, huh?)[2]. Ken Lobb has referred to 20%-40% conversion rates for in-house games at MGS.
And you once again are bound and determined to ignore the differences between the markets you want to compare (hint: they're not identical products, they're not even substitutable products!), I think I'm going to bow out because there's no progress to be made here. HAND.
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[1] - http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=15117
[2] - http://www.joystiq.com/2008/05/22/underperforming-xbla-title...
This will sound rude, but are you trying to fool others are have you just fooled yourself? Comparing a restricted store which only allow a few marked freemium games, with the PC game market in general is ridicules. The article is about the PC market and PC pirates. Not only is the PC market massive bigger than the total of 588 titles since 2004 that XBLA has, but XBLA has less freemium games per title than the PC market has. They also have a different demographic. A XBLA users is average ages 22, is a causal gamer, and has a middle class income. The average PC pirate age is lower, has less exposable income, and preference more hardcore game.
There is no shareable trait between the PC pirate, and the XBLA market. Trying to present the PC market as if its somehow would be the limited selection of XBLA titles is just false. Presenting a small selection bias as representable for the game industry is just...
Through, you don't answer the question on why games designed for high conversion rate should fair worse than games that aren't. You also add a additional questions when putting distinction to the population in question. Are we saying here that pirates are more likely to convert to a pay-to-play model than non-pirates are to go from a freemium model to pay? Whats the basis of such statement? All I see is a claim of inside knowledge, which in 2013 means as much (or little) as anecdotal evidence.
If all we have is unverified claims about high conversion rates, and in opposing side we have studies that shows low conversion rates for identical products, I will go with the study until proven different otherwise. I find the idea that the population in question would have a 2000% effect on the conversion rate, and that pirates are part of that group, to be a very large and unverified claim. The wilder a claim is, the more is it up the commenter to provide evidence to support it.