Namco Bandai Says Free-to-Play Games Lack Quality

Free-to-play video games are becoming more and more prominent but at least one senior executive at a traditional publisher believes that they lack any chance at delivering high quality content.

Speaking during the Cloud Gaming Europe conference Oliver Comte, who is the senior vice president for Europe at Namco Bandai, has stated, “Free-to-play games can’t be high quality.”

The executive believes that the current rise of free games leads players to place less value on AAA development, which traditionally requires more time and more resources but also delivers higher quality games.

Comte added, “We need to put certain value on certain work. When you’re a big company, you can’t take risks too quickly, you can’t make a change just because there’s a fashion for a couple of years; you want to be there in 20 or 30 years.”

Namco Bandai has said that it currently has no plans to enter the freemium or free-to-play space and that they will concentrate on developing their franchises using traditional business models.