Roblox rising
Mariah Carey is putting on a Christmas show for young fans. That’s not particularly big news for the self-proclaimed Queen of Christmas, given that we’re well into December. The twist, however, is that the performance will be virtual, through game platform Roblox.
Carey’s ‘Winter Wonderland’ will be complete with a treasure hunt, item drops and — of course — a rendition of her festive hit All I Want For Christmas Is You, adding Carey to the list of artists who have performed in the virtual world where users flock to play games and hang out.
Rich in robux
For those unfamiliar, Roblox is an online gaming platform that puts much of the creative onus on its players — users program games and play games programmed by other creators. Initially popular with kids, the platform’s audience has rapidly expanded as its potential as a metaverse beyond gaming has grown. Roblox even has its own currency — Robux — which users can exchange for in-game items… but acquiring Robux very much requires real-world currency.
In the last quarter, 58.8 million users were logging in everyday to explore everything the online universe had to offer. That figure’s up 22.6m since 2020 when the company claimed that more than 50% of US kids were already on Roblox. All told, users spent more than 13,000 million hours on Roblox in the last quarter alone. All that playing, chatting and buying generated the company some ~$2.2bn over the last 12 months, with the company valued north of $20bn at the time of writing.
