The free-to-play revolution that has struck PCs and mobile phones has only made a few steps into the console gaming sphere. However, Sony Online Entertainment president John Smedley likes the long term prospects of F2P on consoles.
“It’s 70 per cent of the audience. Free-to-play on PlayStation 3 is huge,” said Smedley . “In fact, right now, it’s us with DCUO and Free Realms and our friends at CCP with Dust 514 that are going to prove that this market really works.”
“There’s a lot of people that go through that store and it’s so easy to find and download these games that it’s a great business model. A lot of people have already stored their credit card information so it’s very frictionless if they do want to buy something,†added Smedley. “We can put out thousands of items and it feels very frictionless. The remarkable thing is with a game like Free Realms where there’s literally thousands of items to buy it, has to be a solid platform to begin with to support that. It’s no small thing to be able to that. It’s a business model of the future.”
“I admit there was a mindset where when you use the word ‘free’ people pause. ‘Wait a minute, what do you mean by free ‘ But even then people want to see the results. With DC Universe Online the split that we’re seeing ended the debate right there,†he asserted. “Free-to-play is the ultimate expression of a free market in video gaming. It’s completely about quality, there’s no purer way to see whether you have a good game or not than by saying ‘this is free, do you want to play it ‘ I would argue that free-to-play is much more pure than regular games because with those marketing can determine who picks up the game.”
Source: GamesIndustry.biz
