For one specific item. I'd wager they think they make more money they way it is currently designed........by simply not publishing the schedule. Since they don't know I'd say more people would plan accordingly if they did know.........and not use diamonds. It is a 6 hour window though and I'd suggest the UK servers. They are a 'day' ahead and you can see the next prize there I've been told.
That's the problem. Someone working a 9-to-5 misses one of those windows entirely (assuming they're not playing the game when they're supposed to be working). If the prize they're looking for is in that window they're SOL. The kicker is that in order for them to
pay Inno they first have to
work! That's the catch-22 with this setup. The act of acquiring money to give to Inno prevents money from being given to Inno. There are really two possible outcomes to the above scenario:
1. The customer gets angry and simply says, "Fine, Inno won't provide the product, I won't give them money". Result=no money for Inno
2. The customer gets their life's priorities mixed up and skips work to stay home and hope their prize comes up, but in doing so their paycheck dries up. Result=no money for Inno
Either way, a for-profit company's business model is precluding a decent amount of potential revenue from coming in.
To make matters even worse, they
had an excellent model. The Winter Event gave about 12 hours notice, then 24 hours where you could try to win something with event currency, then another 24 hours where you could get it with real currency. Still the benefit of unpredictability, but also gave everyone who wanted to spend real currency on in-game items the opportunity to do so. I don't know why they moved away from a successful business model to one with such a glaring logistical problem. I gave them $160 during the Winter Event. I probably won't be giving a dime during this one. I would gladly do so if I had the opportunity, but it looks like that probably won't happen.
Bottom line, the whole point of marketing (especially for a luxury item like a game) is to get your product to the customer's money, and IMO this is not a good way to do it.
