- Jan 9, 2008
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Those hoping that the spread of free-to-play gaming would slow down or halt in the near future won't be happy with what Epic Games Vice President Mark Rein is saying about the next generation of consoles.
Speaking at the Game Horizon conference in Newcastle, UK (as reported by Joystiq), Rein said point blank that "the next-gen consoles are going to be fully embracing the free-to-play and these IAP [in-app purchase]-type business models. So in case you don't know that, I'm putting that out there. Sony and Microsoft are both going heavily in that area."
Free-to-play gaming isn't totally new to consoles these days. Toylogic released cutesy multiplayer RTS/brawler Happy Wars as a free-to-play title on Xbox Live Arcade last year, and Sony Online Entertainment released PS3 versions of free-to-play MMOs DC Universe Online and Free Realms last year as well. More recently, CCP's first-person shooter Dust 514 launched as a free-to-play title on PS3, and Namco has announced that the upcoming Ridge Racer Driftopia will be free to play on both PC and PS3. On the Xbox 360, Signal Studios is working on Ascend: Hand of Kul as a free-to-play RPG, and Microsoft itself is planning to release a free-to-play World Series of Poker title on Xbox Live and Windows 8.
We know that free-to-play is a dirty word among a large segment of the Ars audience, but this isn't necessarily bad news for the future of console gaming. As the above-mentioned titles highlight, free-to-play is no longer synonymous with the casual and "social" clickfests that used to dominate the space. As long as developers can balance the game so paying for items doesn't mean paying to win, this kind of focus could lead to a lot of high-quality games that don't require players to shell out money up front.
Read the rest here:
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/05/epic-vp-next-consoles-will-fully-embrace-free-to-play-gaming/
I don't know exactly how I feel about this honestly. As long as there are still decent single player games released as traditional "full games" (or as "full" as you can get with all the DLC that's bound to be there..), I guess this will only be a minor annoyance. What do you guys think?
EDIT: To clarify: "this will only be a minor annoyance", meaning, a minor annoyance for me to flat out ignore these F2P games. If this becomes part of most titles then that's a definite problem for me.
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