Have you honestly followed the free to play market in japan? Like at all?
I mean, no, why should I?
And that's a real problem. Japan, Korea, some factions of China, they've got this F2P thing down to a science and have been pumping out games that are pretty good and really fun, but the only exposure we retain in our minds to the F2P model is fucking Zynga bullshit. The entire concept is completely toxic here and it's going to take a LOT for people to stop ignoring games just because their F2P. Telling people that everything will be fine because the East has it figured out isn't going to give people a whole lot of solace when it comes to finally having to confront this thing, mostly because the games that do it so well will NEVER see the light of day outside of their respective regions. That's like telling Japanese gamers that 3rd person shooters have the ability to be something really innovative and fun and not all just by gears clones, and then telling them to play Unreal Championship 2 which never released there, or conversely, telling american gamers that Japan really does have the ability to make a fun comedy based mech game, and telling them to play Metal Wolf Panic.
I mean, real talk, poor Hawken! That game is fucking amazing but I feel like no one ever gave it a real chance because of it's F2P model!
This isn't some mobile game though, your example is exaggerated
But we don't, we being western gamers, have the exposure to games that do F2P well. So of course people are leary about it.
People told me for the longest time that Warframe was good, but I never bothered with it until recently because of the f2p nature. Turns out that game is pretty good.
It takes a LOT for people to try new things when money is involved.