The announcement of Star Wars: The Old Republic going free-to-play underlined the difficulties of the subscription-only model. Victor Kislyi, CEO of Wargaming.net, thinks that the switch to free-to-play is not so easy and that some companies are too attached to old business models.
“Hybrid, again, [developers] are so emotionally attached to the old days of retail and the box, which is a guaranteed revenue on day one. They think to themselves ‘we do free-to-play, we do virtual items to sell, but let’s keep the box or keep the subscription.’ This is how they talk. This is wrong,” said Kislyi. “The essential problem of the box is that as soon as you have a fixed price point you cannot overcome that. When you set up any price there are only a certain amount of people who are ready to pay this price. It’s a very narrow corridor.”
“The people who are not willing to pay $60 or $10 a month for subscription or 99 cents per mobile app, you lose them. They don’t enter, ever,” he added. “They never have a chance to look at your game, to enjoy it for a day or a week. The set price does not cater to those who are willing to pay less, but interestingly you also reject those that are willing to pay more. There are people who would pay for a box of StarCraft for $300 but you’ve lost them.”
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Source: GamesIndustry.biz
