Free-to-play can be 'as profitable as a console game' - EA

As reported by PC Gamer.

EA has a small stable of free-to-play games, including Battlefield Heroes and Need for Speed World. "If you get a couple of those to scale they're as profitable as a console game," says Gibeau. "The free-to-play group inside of EA Games is growing extremely fast – we've got 17 million users, 4-5 services stood up right now."

One of the great advantages of free-to-play games is that they're popular in parts of the world where piracy makes it hard to make money from traditional boxed retail sales. "With Need for Speed World, Russia and Brazil are number one and two – the Ukraine is in there," says Gibeau, "I can't sell packaged goods in those territories. But I'm reaching an audience with Need for Speed content. It's an engine that's not as advanced as Frostbite 2 but it's certainly got great production values and great game designs, and it's free-to-play with micro transactions."

Free-to-play has been around for a long, long time, but we've recently witnessed an increasing amount of developers and publishers adopting the business model. Recently, some very high profile games went free-to-play most notably Dungeons & Dragons Online, The Lord of the Rings Online, Age of Conan and quite possibly the biggest - Team Fortress 2. Blizzard has just announced that World of Warcraft (which is most probably the most successful game of all time) will be free-to-play - although with a level 20 cap.

It is certainly an interesting trend that seems beneficial to both developers and gamers. I suppose the biggest problem right now is that games that are designed from the start as free-to-play are lacking in production values. However, if there is really that much money to be made there, we might see more and more free-to-play with higher budgets.

Your thoughts?

**** free to play.

F2p is fine as long as it isn;t pay to win like 90 percent of f2p are

its a good idea but you just know they will start making you pay for that better gun or that stat increase which sucks if they gave u tdm free for example, then made u pay for different game modes, or new maps or those kinds of things then it wouldnt be as badonebeelo

As I read your first sentence I was thinking "well they got to make money somewhere right?", but then I read the second part and I agree 100%.

That would definitely be the best way to deal with the whole F2P thing without making unbalanced games. Offer one, unalterable mode of play with a couple of maps, and make the users pay to access the rest of the content (maps, modes, whatever).

[QUOTE="onebeelo"]its a good idea but you just know they will start making you pay for that better gun or that stat increase which sucks if they gave u tdm free for example, then made u pay for different game modes, or new maps or those kinds of things then it wouldnt be as badReddestSkies

As I read your first sentence I was thinking "well they got to make money somewhere right?", but then I read the second part and I agree 100%.

That would definitely be the best way to deal with the whole F2P thing without making unbalanced games. Offer one, unalterable mode of play with a couple of maps, and make the users pay to access the rest of the content (maps, modes, whatever).

The problem is they would actually have to work, they can't just make a new op weapon.

IMO, a game is only F2P as long as every usable in-game item is free to get.
The difference between paying money and not paying money should be time based, either spend 30 hours playing or spend 1 hour working.
LoL did quite a good job with the F2P system.

**** free to play.

ZombieKiller7

[QUOTE="ZombieKiller7"]

**** free to play.

JustPlainLucas

Well, if it stops piracy from destroying the markets...

Well, if it stops piracy from destroying the markets...

Starshine_M2A2

F2p is fine as long as it isn;t pay to win like 90 percent of f2p are

James161324

90% of F2P mmos are PvE so theres nothing to win.

I hope more games start adopting LoL's model. It's very elegant for multiplayer-only games.

Edit: UIF, LoL tackled the low budget problem by starting out with a small but very polished product developed by only a couple of people, and then producing more content as they picked up players. By now it features a ridiculous number of unique heroes. I think such a model can be adopted for most multiplayer genres successfully. No one plays multiplayer games for the voice acting or cutscenes or high end graphics.

[QUOTE="ZombieKiller7"]

**** free to play.

JustPlainLucas

[QUOTE="JustPlainLucas"][QUOTE="ZombieKiller7"]

**** free to play.

inoperativeRS

Well, if it stops piracy from destroying the markets...

This coming from the same video game maker that wants people to pay real money to unlock outfits for thier golfers in the newest Tiger Woods. I saw that and could not believe it...only thing that shocked me more was the people I played online that actually did it. Young men are primarily the video game consumer...they are paying real money to dress up thier "dollies" in a virtual world. Makes me laugh and thank the heavens I was brought up in a different generation

So instead of "pay to play" then think about going to the "pay to gain" system?