Another major publisher finds its next buffet
Free-to-play was a good idea, and some surprisingly great games were coming out of the market. Then the big publishers took notice and decided to go overboard. Not only is Ubisoft planninga slew of F2P gamesto flood the market, it wants to go one step further — filling $60 retail games with microtransactions.
“There will be free-to-play on consoles,” said Ubi’sAlain Martinez.“But in the future, with games likeSleeping Dogs, we could see more opportunity for $60 games to learn from the free-to-play model.
“The next generation will offer more and more item-based content. This will benefit our games’ profitability.”
I was a big proponent of the free-to-play model for a little while, until the likes of Ubisoft got a sniff. Now I just know the market will be exploited without a sense of consequence, until the entire model loses all credibility and inevitably dies. Oh, and any publisher expecting me to pay $60 for a “free-to-play” game can f*ck off right now. It was tacky inSleeping Dogs, and I dread to think how much worse it’ll get.
Ubisoft: Free-to-play will affect all of our games[VentureBeat]
