The retail PC gaming industry has been ravaged by piracy in the past several years, leading to wholesale changes by PC publishers going online. Microsoft has followed suit with this, releasing Age of Empires Online as a free-to-play title supported by micro-transactions.
“Of course we’re concerned about hackers and their ability to thwart our transaction model, but producing a downloadable game and a free-to-play one in particular really helps to prevent that,” said Microsoft Games Studios general manager Dave Luehmann. “It’s just the evolution of the business. Console retail space has been strong and valuable for publishers, developers and retailers for a long time.”
“In the console world, piracy is a little better understood and managed. Whereas on an open platform, you need to have a different kind of business model that s more resilient to piracy, he added. In Eastern countries, transaction-based online games have demonstrably been more secure against piracy, and I think it makes sense for us in the West to catch up to this.”
“While there are advantages to the online market, there are disadvantages too. The online marketplace gives you more possibilities of having longer legs and a stronger business. However, the launch of your game becomes less of an event,” noted Luehmann. “It’s hard to have a big get-together and launch party for a download game like the ones we had for titles like Age of Empires 3. It s a different sequence of events the launch isn’t one big event, it s something that grows over a longer period of time.”
“As you get out in the market and establish yourself, it can be more of an event when you introduce new content. We’ve certainly seen WoW have great success with that, although that’s partly because retail is still an important part of their business model,” he continued. “I think that s the challenge with these sorts of game. You have to slowly build that word of mouth, it doesn t come in a flash, it s a persistent ongoing marketing campaign.”
Source: MCV
