Industry experts: The future is free

Games industry experts have predicted that the free-to-play model will take over in the future.

Employees at EA and BBC told MCV that one-time payments for games will soon be a thing of the past.

EA interactive senior vice president, Nick Earl, said: “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.

“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.”

BBC Worldwide’s executive vice president of games, Robert Nashak, says free-to-play will lead to better games.

“What’s beautiful about it is the freemium model really favours quality games because everyone gets to try before they buy and I think it’s going to lead overall to better quality, because if you’re not hooking people in you can’t monetise.

“I think freemium changes the landscape and raises the quality bar in a good way.”

EA COO Peter Moore has previously said that all games will become free-to-play, while Crytek will become a fully free-to-play company in the near future.

Sony’s purchase of cloud-streaming service Gaikai also points to a change in the industry.