15 Jun

You’ve all seen one of these before.  Most of you have caressed their smooth exteriors.  Odds are you’ve never questioned from where they have arisen.  HOW THEY’VE COME TO BE!  They’re all around us…in our stores, at our birthdays.  Sometimes when you obtain one you wonder WHY, OH WHY did it have to be this.  Most of the time, there is call for celebration.  I am of course talking about, prepaid gift cards!

I know!  Why the heck was there even a booth pertaining to prepaid gift cards at E3?  It was actually a pretty damn big booth at that.  There’s a company by the name of inComm, which has for a few years now been dominating the prepaid gift card market.  Ever get one for Best Buy?  How about Macaroni Grill?  Use a 30 day card for your World of Warcraft subscription?  They have their hands in all of that.

They’ve arisen from a small company in Georgia to a mega-corporation dealing in the billions.  Did you know that over 30% of all iTune sales have been via their gift cards?  Think about that number for a bit.

Personally, whenever I saw a gift card I never actually bothered to ponder how they came about.  There really isn’t much to add to this other than the expectations that inComm will be making a push into micro-transaction social games and MMO’s.  The main reason they were there was to foster relationships with publishers in order to increase their presence in the gaming market.  So while that business hullabaloo is boring for the average gamer, expect it to have an impact in gaming future.  Hope you’re all ready for an increase in social game related prepaid cards.  Yes, Farmville already has them.

As an E3 experience goes, these were some of the nicest, down to earth people, I’ve ever interviewed… almost…too nice.

*looks around*