GamesIndustry.biz said:

Q: Was there ever a temptation to go free-to-play?

Danny Bilson: Yes. Yes, we've looked at it.

Q: What was the deciding factor for not doing it?

Danny Bilson: I can't say we're not for sure because we're still looking at business models. So I don't really want to go into that, but we've talked about it and looked at it. We're talking about a lot of other stuff. Relic is working on experimenting and our desire is for them to lead us into the PC free-to-play world. And they're high quality, they've been PC game builders for years and they are tasked with that mission right now, and it's underway.

Q: Is not an area any publisher can afford to ignore anymore...

Danny Bilson: I love it. We've got a studio up there that is seriously investing in that.

Q: Do you think anyone has the free-to-play core game covered yet?

Danny Bilson: There's League Of Legends which is DoTa, repackaged. They've done really well, has been a phenomenal success. And that's a very hardcore game, almost too hardcore for me. I just get slaughtered! There is room in that world. I believe it, Relic believes it, Brian believes it and in the coming year you'll hear more from us about that.

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Eurogamer said:

I have to ask about Dawn of War 3, which you've spoken to Eurogamer about before. You mentioned an announcement that didn't materialise. What's happening with it?

Danny Bilson: There's a lot of rethinking going on right now with the RTS 40k stuff. We're going to do something different, but we're in a bit of a rethinking mode. What we had to do at Relic was prioritise Company of Heroes 2 now and then move back to 40k. With that we moved that over here for a bit - just a bit - because we needed to load all the resource onto making Company of Heroes 2 awesome.

But look, everybody at Relic loves 40k. I love 40k. I also have tremendous respect for Games Workshop and the people I work with there. They're some of the best people I've ever worked with in my career. So I personally feel really strongly about that brand.

So Dawn of War 3 isn't dead?

Danny Bilson: No. But we're doing some rethinking. What that really has to do with is the RTS business, and what's the best way to present RTS? We're not getting out of RTS. It's just, what's the best way to present it in the future? We'll be talking more about that later. There are aspects of Company of Heroes we haven't talked about that are progressive and forward thinking, that we'll roll out between now and the launch of the game. We're just giving you the first look at Company of Heroes 2. There's actually more to it.

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Mrbob said:

I guess the ground breaking feature for DoW3 didn't pan out too well? I remember Bilson hyping it up in the past, and now DoW3 is on the back burner.

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There are aspects of Company of Heroes we haven't talked about that are progressive and forward thinking,

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Mindlog said:

As a CoH fan... I don't find a statement like that very comforting.

/marketing jaded

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FieryBalrog said:

Sooooo

Company of Heroes doesn't sell that well. despite being a fantastic game. Instead, Relic triumphantly returns with Dawn of War 2 which sells very well. Relic tries for years to make F2P Company of Heroes Online game. Instead, COHO gets canned towards the end of development. Everyone expects Dawn of War 3. Instead, Relic makes a third person shooter and says they will announce DoW 3. Months go by and everyone is waiting. Instead, Relic suddenly announces CoH2 and DoW 3 is ???. In addition, Relic is now working on... a F2P game...

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BigJiantRobut said:

Why not? The first CoH was pretty different and forward thinking, it'd be a shame if 2 was just the same game with better graphics.

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