But once Crytek has completed its current contracts with traditional boxed products, its studios will only produce F2P titles - supported by its new social gaming platform, GFACE.
"As we were developing console games we knew, very clearly, that the future is online and free-to-play," said Yerli.
With respect to the Wii U system, when we began working on it, one of our goals was to have a variety of purchase options and additional e-commerce options available at its launch. And because of that, we have prepared a Digital Rights Management system. We have designed the system from a technical standpoint to allow developers to freely take advantage of things like free to play and micro transactions.
So basically, F2P’s finally coming of age, and players now demand it instead of recoiling in disgust at thoughts of nickles, dimes, and pay-to-win pyramid schemes. Meanwhile, BioWare’s made no bones about the need to evolve to survive – even as it attempted to tell us everything was a-okay mere days before, well, you know.
the games will be free to play, but they will probably start charging for ammo
"I think, ultimately, those microtransactions will be in every game, but the game itself or the access to the game will be free," he said. "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's no wonder publishers still love the idea, because it gives them an unprecedented level of control over the player experience...This makes the games ultimately disposable, while making the publishers utterly indispensable and inseparable from the games they sell.
In practice, the free-to-play approach inextricably links the business model with the game design...I'd rather have the Shigeru Miyamotos of the world choose games based on what they're inspired to create, not on which projects they think can be adapted to a viable business model to maximize average revenue per paying user.
All games must have a free-to-play element, whether it's a timed trial, a feature-locked demo or a complete experience filled with microtransactions.
Ultima Forever: Quest for the Avatar is set to launch on iPad and PC later this year. The game, which Barnett said will be playable "start to finish" for free, is the second major free-to-play project from BioWare, the first being Facebook tie-in Dragon Age Legends.
Barnett said. So instead of "glass walls" preventing advancement through the game, Ultima Forever players will be able to buy additional means of transport or the ability to fast travel through the world.
http://kotaku.com/5930586/star-wars-the-old-republic-is-going-free+to+play-up-to-level-50-this-fall
That was fast.
Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot has been speaking to GamesIndustry International about Ubi’s reasons for embracing the free to play model. He says free to play games are more cost effective to create because typical PC releases are so heavily pirated. He claims that “only about five to seven per cent” of players pay for PC games, “the rest is pirated.”
Guillemot doesn’t provide any evidence for this, but insists that the rate of paying customers for a traditional release is equal to that of a free to play game. He says that the free to play model lets Ubisoft “take content which we’ve developed in the past, graphics etc,” to make “cheaper games and improve them over time.”
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