shinobi602
Member
Hold on to your butts.
EA's chief operating officer has expressed his belief that free-to-play is an "inevitability" for all mainstream games.
Speaking with Kotaku, Peter Moore suggests that a F2P future would be a good thing, as it would constantly bring in new players and potential customers.
He explained, "I think, ultimately, those microtransactions will be in every game, but the game itself or the access to the game will be free.
"I think there's an inevitability that happens five years from now, 10 years from now, that, let's call it the client, to use the term, [is free.] It is no different than... it's free to me to walk into The Gap in my local shopping mall. They don't charge me to walk in there. I can walk into The Gap, enjoy the music, look at the jeans and what have you, but if I want to buy something I have to pay for it."
It comes in the wake of rumours that Bioware's MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic, which EA publishes, is looking at the viability of adopting a F2P model. If EA were to roll it out to their other titles though, it begs the question of how it would work. Microtransactions could be easily integrated into the likes of Madden NFL 13 or SimCity, but it's less apparent how they'd work with titles such as Mass Effect 3.
While Moore accepts that the proposed F2P revolution may not be imminent, that's not to say he didn't suggest changes are happening right this instant. Prefacing his claims with the warning that "hardcore gamers won't like to hear this", he explained that companies are increasingly taking notice of platforms other than the consoles.
"We're going through, as an industry, just an unbelievably difficult transformation, that is not from one business model to another but from one business model to a myriad of different business models," he said.
"Consoles are still going to be a very important part of what we do. But so are browsers. So are iOS devices. So are Android mobile phones. So are PCs, which are feeling a renaissance. It's all coming together in this potpourri..."
None of this is hugely surprising. When we recently spoke to Moore about the public perception of EA, he revealed to us that he feels "The $60 game is dying. The mid-range game is no longer profitable. EA has to focus its energies elsewhere in order to meet those quarterly targets."
http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/06/21/eas-peter-moore-free-to-play-is-an-inevitability
Kotaku said:Kotaku: "I understand how that would work for Madden. I can't imagine how that would work for a Mass Effect. That's a storyline game."
Moore: "That's the point. If the business model... what do you do? It may well be that there will be games that survive and they are the $60 games, but I believe that the real growth is bringing billions of people into the industry and calling them gamers. Hardcore gamers won't like to hear this. They like to circle the wagons around what they believe is something they feel they have helped build—and rightly so. But we have seen, whether it was with the Wii getting mom off the couch to do Wii Sports or whether it was, more recently EA Sports Active, where we get females who love to work out, all the things that social gaming did—Rock Band did it, Guitar Hero did it—all of the things that elevated it from being a dark art of teenage boys usually sequestered in the bedroom—that it was testosterone-filled content that everybody railed against—to where everybody is a gamer...if you can move your index finger and swipe it this way, your'e a gamer. And that has got to be the way it goes."
http://kotaku.com/5919847/the-stran...ng-future-of-video-games-according-to-a-giant
Kotaku said:Moore: "We've got to listen better as an industry, but at at the same time we've got to pick our way through these things. Stephen, we can't end up being music. Music used to make money selling music. They don't make money selling music anymore. Apple makes money selling music. God bless them, because they sorted out the problem that was BitTorrents and LimeWire, Kazaa..."
Kotaku: "My kitchen table is LimeWire's kitchen table, because they went out of business and my wife and I needed a new table."
Moore: "I remember going to a lot of going-out-of-business sales in 1999, south of Market, but this ability for us to learn from the lessons of music... Maybe we don't sell our games up front and it's all about [making money later]. Maybe it is like music. Music is now all about going on tour and concerts, go do corporate appearances, sell your merchandise, build your online website, find ways to do it that way, because they don't make much money after Apple takes its cut, and that's where most of us get our music.
Kotaku said:Kotaku: "How do you balance the effectiveness of any microtransaction-based game design or business model with the anxiety a gamer might feel that they're being nickel and dimed?"
Moore: "I think, ultimately, those microtransactions will be in every game, but the game itself or the access to the game will be free. Ultimately, my goal is... I measure our business in millions of people have bought our game. Maybe when I'm retired, as this industry progresses, hundreds of millions are playing the games. Zero bought it. Hundreds of millions are playing. We're getting 5 cents, 6 cents ARPU [average revenue per user] a day out of these people. The great majority will never pay us a penny which is perfectly fine with us, but they add to the eco-system and the people who do pay money—the whales as they are affectionately referred to—to use a Las Vegas term, love it because to be number one of a game that like 55 million people playing is a big deal."
Kotaku: "You're saying inevitably all games are going to be that model?"
Moore: "I think there's an inevitability that happens five years from now, 10 years from now, that, let's call it the client, to use the term, [is free.] It is no different than... it's free to me to walk into The Gap in my local shopping mall. They don't charge me to walk in there. I can walk into The Gap, enjoy the music, look at the jeans and what have you, but if I want to buy something I have to pay for it."
