Love it or hate it, PlayStation's free-to-play business is booming

Hopefully Microsoft takes notes from this and make F2P game F2P and not require you to have Gold membership. Plus I hope they get rid of their Paywall. it needs to go.

Love f2p when its not pay to win. Look at things like PS2 and dota2. Games play great, and are balanced with out you putting in a dime.

As long as F2P means things like Warframe of Path of Exile (PC, but works as example) then bring em on!

Just keep the casual rubish "Zinga Style" in FB, where it belongs.

I've played Warframe for over 200 hours. That's more than most games I had to pay for. It's had a couple of significant updates, with editional warframes and weapons and accessories. So I had no problem, supporting the developer with my hard earned cash, that I would have gladly paid to own it in the first place. Warframe, in my eyes has done F2P right. You don't have to pay to progress through the game. If you never buy a single platinum pack, you progress, just like everyone else, from playing.

It's funny how people act as if grinding through the game, to progress through a game, is a bad thing. That's what gaming is all about. Playing a game to progress, get better.

Who is the moron spending money on these mediocre games? Smart people play free and just grind. These games are usually the same boring, no story multiplayer first person shooter, tank driver, etc.. with different backgrounds and weapons. Some are set in the future, some in the past. Most, not all, but most F2P games are unfinished messes with cookie cutter content from poor devs looking to cash in on the formula where you either grind or you pay. Sometimes it is balanced, most often it is not and favors the payer. And why shouldn't it? The goal is to make money not entertain you. The problem with this model is you never get very many great games or SP experiences. You also reduce gaming to the old arcade days where every continue, every item, every collectable costs another quarter in the machine. Arcades worked because we didn't have the ability to bring the technology in the home. But now we next gen consoles and high powered PCs. We don't need to nickel and dime everyone. F2P is a never ending cash cow. You never pay for a finished product but instead constantly spend. One dev in favor of F2P called it Free to Invest. That speaks volumes.

Sadly... stupid people will continue to spend money on this crap.

downfall of the industry ... f2p = grind / no ideas / only Money draining / its virtual crack

warframe is an never finished prototype game that is now sold in uber expensive chunks to junks

(yes, I played it for quit a time)

nothing, NOTHING beats traditionally developed full Price games

just when Video.games succeeded in achieving a Status of cultural relevance and creative importance,

they through this all away by turning the whole Industry into a Casino Business

its over .... greedy bastards

No I don't......

Path of the Exile was F2P and it had more then 100 hours of content, for free and got a 9 on Gamespot. Microtransactions are fine if they only concern cosmetics and extra's.

This is good news for all gamers. Hopefully the f2p trends continue.

And you get what you pay for.

The only free to play game I play atm is Planetside 2. It's fun but I don't think I'll be buying anything, I'm just not a fan of microtransactions. I'm glad the game is not pay to win though and that you can unlock everything with in game credits(aside from skins and outfits).

dont care. ......

sorry i just dont.

and call it what it is would be nice thx

Its Free To Pay..get it right. Im not against it being called free to play, but would you really give a sht if it was called Free To Pay?

I almost think Free To Pay sounds nicer. because you are Free To Pay, that sounds way better. It sounds more welcoming.

For Free To Play, just look at League of Legends, fantastic ever growing game, patches and new releases are every few weeks. In store shop doesn't break the game (unless you count certain skins).

Brilliant model, invest more or less then you think it's worth

It´s free to play, but feel free to pay.

The only F2P game that I like is Tekken Revolution, but I never buy anything. Just don't let the game get to you. Because once your hooked then your going to be throwing away your money

I have no personal desire to ever play an F2P after being bored to tears by so many, but why would I rant about it like so many here? I have too many full-featured games to play for that. That said, I find it odd that so many industry types are going ga-ga over a business model that demands that 3-15% of the user base prop the whole thing up...

Making money off free to play. That should tell you all you need to know about that misleading title.

While F2P games deserve their notorious reputation for being pay to win more often than not, there are some really good ones that can truly be played and enjoyed for free. ( TF2, Dota 2, Planetside, Warthunder etc.)

That all good and well assuming that the free to play games are well designed, and you don't have to worry about money and getting a good deal the whole time. Warframe was completely repetitive. How much can I play to never see that stupid vent animation again.

meh Im honestly fed up with free to play multiplayer BS'ing

Deep Down!

I thought Dust 514 was just an awful game with a ton of potential. It had Halo: Big Lots edition written all over it. But I've been a steady player on DC Universe for about a year now. It is certainly not Pay to win

Can't wait for PlanetSide 2 and War Thunder to come to PS4. Those two are fine examples of great F2P games done right.

I'm fine with free to play, but it's hard to do. The whole point is to make the player want to spend money. This devolves into paying for advantages to progress through the game and you come away with the pay to win feature.

I can play a F2P game just fine and have no desire to put down a single dollar. However, when done right you'll get people buying in. Games like LoL, have proven that it works just fine.

Not a fan of F2P. I did download both Warframe and Blacklight Retribution, but neither held my interest. DC Universe Online looks like it might be cool, but ive seen F2P destroy SWTOR so im not going anywhere near an MMO with that payment model.

Once parents stop allowing their children to use their debit cards, F2P will die in under a year.

I'm playing Warframe on PC right now, it's good F2P IMO.

All F2P is booming, but I'd hesitate to call that business... the biggest reason it's booming is because it's free. I mean the article mentions things like ARPPU but doesn't actually provide any numbers... so for all it says it could mean that more people are playing, playing not buying.

F2P is a good concept in theory... TBH it's damm near perfect, in theory. It lets people preview the game without major restrictions before people decide to drop money on the game. Unfortunately F2P often turns into P2W which is a fail on all sides, nobody wins with P2W (people that pay may *think* they're winning, but they're just being suckered into spending their dough). After all I could go to an auction and buy an Olympic medal or an Oscar, but that don't mean that I actually won either.

We'll obviously be seeing more F2P coming, but the devs really need to take some time to think their F2P systems through. A well done F2P system should work in such a way that people who pay are playing the full extent of the product while those that are looking around are basically playing a demo. Gah, I can write so much more about this but it's really turning into an essay instead of a comment, so I'll end here.

While I don't mind free-to-play games that are priced well (basically, free demo and regular price for the full game), I have yet to spend any money on any free-to-play game. I'm not sure why, but I think subconsciously, I just don't want to pay money on a game I'm already playing for free. No matter how reasonable the price is, I think it just feels like a rip off.

HATE.

It's funny the director of the studio that made Blacklight: Retribution is cautioning F2P can "go down a very dark road"; I thought Blacklight was one of the greediest, most cynical F2P games I'd ever played.