Free-to-play to become common on next-generation consoles, says Ubisoft

By: Jason McCarthy

  |   September 29th, 2012   |  

Uncategorized

Free-to-play is being considered as possibly the most attracted business model in the future by the gaming industry analysts.

The publishers are already beginning to adopt the idea and trying to make the most of it, with a handful of companies already becoming familiar with the success that it promises.

Despite doing exceptionally well with their $60 games, Ubisoft has not been subtle about its interest in the free-to-play model.

The Ubisoft CEO Alain Martinez is of the opinion that the contemporary model is so promising that the full priced retail games for the next-generation can learn a great deal from it.

“There will be free-to-play on consoles,” he said. “But in the future, with games like Sleeping Dogs, we could see more opportunity for $60 games to learn from the free-to-play model.”

He went on to add that it is already becoming evident that the profitability of the games can be increased significantly through micro-transactions and therefore the not-so-distant future will see even more publishers put item-based content on offer.

“The next generation will offer more and more item-based content. This will benefit our games’ profitability.”

Coming from a company that has already given the free-to-play model a shot with The Settles Online and Ghost Recon Online, the comments made by the Ubisoft CEO definitely seems to hold a lot of ground.

The funding of the two games through micro-translations has given the publisher a good enough reason to express its satisfaction with the model and declare that it will find its way to the console.

The company is optimistic about the impact of free-to-play and casual games on profitability in 2013, expecting it to rise by 20 million Euros.

Over the last few years, the gaming industry has been exhibiting a bit of stagnancy, with the publishers apparently more than happy with throwing sequels into the market instead of offering gamers a new and fresh experience.

With the level of creativity going down at an alarming rate, the gamers are no longer sure if spending $60 on a game is really worth it as they fear they will come across pretty much a similar experience to what they have already experienced before.

Instead, the trend of casual gaming that cost significantly less than core games is growing, not to mention the free-to-play games on PC. The latter has garnered immense success because it allows players to get a taste of the basic elements of the game and gives them the option to enhance the experience even further by paying just a small fee.

The likes of League of Legends and Defense of the Ancients (DotA) are have millions of fans around the world and it is games like these that have prompted publishers to start giving serious consideration to the free-to-play model instead of relying on their $60 games.