Wagner James Au / New World Notes

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Linden Lab Expanding SL Mobile Testing to Its Estimated 68,000+ Premium Subscribers “Really Soon”

Update, 4/24: SL usage analyst Tyche just told me: "The last equivalent figure I have is from Jan 2021 where Premium mainland owners was 68,409." So I've updated the Premium estimate accordingly!

In case you missed it, Linden Lab unveiled the latest update to its Second Life on mobile project last week (watch above), which is coming along quite nicely. (Though avatars move around somewhat oddly and gravity-free, as if they're steadfastly moonwalking across the world.)  But for my money, the big reveal comes toward the end:

We're still accepting private alpha applications from our Premium Plus subscribers… we're looking forward to opening up the early tester program to Premium subscribers really soon.

Emphasis mine, because that will be a pretty large expansion of mobile. While Linden Lab hasn't posted how many Premium Plus subscribers they have, I'd estimate somewhere in the four figure range. So assume Premium Plus users no won mobile in the three-four figure range.

The Premium user base, by contrast, is much larger:

SL premium mobile access

Last I checked there with SL data analyst Tyche Shepherd's figures from 2021, were there were just over 68,000 Premium subscribers. Since then that number has probably grown rather than shrink, even approaching 100,000.

Opening mobile to all of them will represent a significant leap of SL users on mobile — and because Premium/Premium+ subscribers are by definition among the most dedicated users, I think we'll start seeing the virtual world gradually but steadily shift toward becoming a mobile-centric experience. For content creators, now is probably a good time to start thinking about creating experiences and content that optimize well on mobile first and foremost.  

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3 responses to “Linden Lab Expanding SL Mobile Testing to Its Estimated 68,000+ Premium Subscribers “Really Soon””

  1. Liana Avatar
    Liana

    Is soon the same as Blizzards definition of “soon”? 😉

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  2. Kaylee West Avatar
    Kaylee West

    Since 2008 over 2000 of my undergrad students have done lessons in SL. One of the issues we’ve faced constantly over that period of time is how poorly SL performs on many students computers. Most have Macs, many quite old. My hope with the mobile version is that this will overcome this long-standing problem. I’ve tested some of the things we do with Lumiya and they actually work to some degree. Here’s hoping that with the new LL mobile app things will work even better. Sadly, as premium subscriber of 17 years I have not had the chance to test the new app. Hope we don’t have to wait too long as after so many years of developing lessons, material, environments, conversational NPC in SL and doung research and publishing on our educationalwork in SL (you are welcome LL – SL has been a hard sell at the university), I will be retiring from academia at the end of this year. Fingers crossed!

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  3. Ai Austin Avatar
    Ai Austin

    I also hope the SL fir Mobile app is not too restrictive on which versions of iOS for iPad and Android OS they will run on. My iPad Mini is at iOS 15.8.4. which is security updated still and a number of iPhones and iPads cannot use iOS versions later than 15.x.

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