14 DAY TRIAL // BioWare has once again talked about free-to-play games by saying that, while these titles can’t fully replace subscription-based games, like its most recent Star Wars: The Old Republic, they do provide ample opportunities, with the studio teasing an unannounced project that’s based on a classic property “that people have a lot of fond memories around.”
BioWare has seen some major changes in the last year, becoming a full-pledged label inside Electronic Arts’ corporate structure, overseeing practically all role-playing and strategy projects that are being developed by various studios owned by the company.
While talking about its latest project, the massive Star Wars: The Old Republic online title, Greg Zeschuk, the studio’s vice president, once again talked about the growing divide between subscription-based online games, like The Old Republic, and free-to-play ones, like DC Universe Online, saying that this area of the market won’t be dominated by one or the other.
"You look at the online space in general and it's fragmenting into all these different areas, but the core still works. The subscription model still works," Zeschuk told Joystiq.
"We know a lot of people say, 'Oh, everything's just going free-to-play.' But that's just one slice. There's one slice that's free-to-play, there's one slice that's social, there's traditional subscription still going."
Zeschuk points out, however, that his studio isn’t shy of using this strategy with properties that work with the upcoming free-to-play Warhammer: Wrath of Heroes RPG coming next year, and even teased an upcoming project that will be based on an existing property.
"You can re-imagine things and kinda envision them in different ways," he said, when talking about the advantages of free-to-play online games. "We have some other stuff we haven't announced yet coming from our play-for-free team that I'm really excited about. It's going to bring back some IP that people have a lot of fond memories around."
BioWare has quite a lot of older IPs in its portfolio and now, since it’s overseeing all other RPG or RTS projects for EA, it has access to quite a lot of other properties, so who knows what we might see as a free-to-play experience in 2012.