14 DAY TRIAL // The developer of the new Neverwinter role playing game, which will focus on the cooperative element, have not yet decided on the business model that will power their game but it seems that players will not have to pay a monthly subscription to enjoy it.
Talking to Gamasutra as part of a larger interview Jack Emmert, who is the Chief Operating Officer at developer Cryptic Studios, has answered “No” when asked whether his company would only derive revenue from selling boxed copies of the new Neverwinter video game.
He said, “So whether it's subscription fee, whether it's free-to-play, whether it's microtransactions, whether it's pay-by-the-minute, whether it's some sort of Ponzi scheme that I haven't figured out, I don't know. None of that has been announced.”
It seems that the subscription model is not the most attractive for Cryptic, with the developer adding, “There is a threshold to get into the subscription business that requires a quality level that demands a lot of resources. That gives you a chance to roll the dice and see whether you're competitive.”
Cryptic has quite a bit of experience working on full fledged MMOs, having worked on City of Heroes and on City of Villains for NCsoft before being completely bought by Atari, with witch it worked on Champions Online and on the recent Star Trek Online.
The company was initially thought to be preparing a complete MMO experience using the Neverwinter license from Atari but the newly unveiled project will be leaning more to the role playing game genre.
The new Neverwinter PC project is set to arrive in the fall of next year, with fantasy author R.A. Salvatore preparing a new trilogy of books set in the same universe.
The MMO market has begun to move away from the simple monthly subscription mode, using free to play as a way to attract gamers and micro transactions to make the money needed to support the video game.