According to Mark Rein, VP of Epic Games, the next generation consoles from Sony and Microsoft will be following a model more familiar to mobile and tablet users.
“The next-gen consoles are going to be fully embracing the free-to-play and these IAP-type business models,” Rein told the audience at Game Horizon “So in case you don’t know that I’m putting that out there. Sony and Microsoft are both going heavily in that area.”
Whilst we don’t have a lot of evidence that they will be following this model, we do have at least one big example from Sony that free-to-play might be the way to go. Sony Worldwide Studios chief Shuhei Yoshida said his company’s working on a “free-to-play type” PS4 game, here’s what he had to say below.
“We are developing a free-to-play type of game, but we haven’t announced it yet,” Yoshida told Game Informer. “We don’t have any subscription-based games in development, but we are not crossing out any type of game; if it makes sense for a particular project, we’ll look at adopting different models. We are open for any types of models. Overall, we are increasing investment in the digital side of development, either through digital titles like Journey that we’ve been doing, but also trying to add more service-based models to our games going forward, like DLCs or additional features post launch.”
Although the introduction of in-app purchases does appeal to me at all, free-to-play games could definitely be an interesting thing on consoles, the current gen never really embraced it but I can see it being a big thing especially with the microtransactions involved. Plus everyone loves getting something for free!
Let me know in the comments if you think F2P games in IAPs coming to the consoles is a good thing.
