14 DAY TRIAL // Electronic Arts has shared its thoughts on the future of the gaming industry and revealed, through the voice of its Chief Operating Officer, Peter Moore, that titles in the future will be free-to-play and will rely on microtransactions to make money.
EA has been trying out all sorts of strategies with its variety of franchises, some more successful than others.
As such, the company’s COO, Peter Moore, is confident enough to predict that free-to-play games will become more and more popular, allowing companies to focus solely on such types of experiences while making a profit from microtransactions.
"We're going through, as an industry, just an unbelievably difficult transformation, that is not from one business model to another but from one business model to a myriad of different business models," he told Kotaku.
"I think, ultimately, those micro transactions will be in every game, but the game itself or the access to the game will be free."
Moore believes that current games, which cost $60/€60 and are designed to sell one or two million copies, will soon be replaced by free-to-play experiences that are set to reach tens if not hundreds of millions of customers from all over the world.
"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]," he said.
"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."
While Moore admits that traditional $60 games will continue to exist, more and more people will be attracted by free-to-play experiences.
"It may well be that there will be games that survive and they are the $60 games, but I believe that the real growth is bringing billions of people into the industry and calling them gamers," the EA executive added.
EA is a leader in terms of free-to-play games as it maintains a variety of impressive online titles that are free to experience, from NFS: World to Battlefield Play4Free.