14 DAY TRIAL // After acknowledging that the PC is the fastest growing market for video games at the moment, publisher Electronic Arts has gone one step further in order to recognize that the freemium business model will power most of the gaming experience of the future.
Nick Earl, who is the senior vice president in charge of the interactive division at Electronic Arts, has stated, “The future is not about one-time payments, the future is about freemium. A decent number of people convert to paying and they may not pay a lot but most of them actually pay more than you’d think.”
At the moment, freemium is already well established on the PC and on mobile devices, but the console market is still dominated by packaged goods sale.
The Electronic Arts executive believes that the situation might change in the coming years.
He added, “I don’t know if freemium gets to console but I do know that humans like free stuff. I also know humans who will pay for something if they’ve tried it out and they like it. I’ve wondered if freemium expands beyond the tablet, Facebook and smartphones, and out into consoles? I don’t think it’s impossible for that to happen.”
Electronic Arts has experimented with a number of free-to-play and microtransaction-based games, ranging from the uninspired Lord of Ultima to the charming Dragon Age: Legends.
It’s not clear how well the titles did in financial terms or whether EA plans to deliver more similar games.
The upcoming Ultima Forever: Quest for Avatar from BioWare will use free-to-play as a business model and will try to resurrect one of the best role-playing franchises in the catalog of the publisher.
The game will be online-based and will use a new timeframe and setting, expanding on, rather than remaking on the fourth game in the series, and will be released in late 2012.