EA Say F2P Competes With Consoles

the head of EA Games believes that F2P could be a market as profitable for them as their console games.

Let’s put that in perspective. A game like Modern Warfare XVIII sells around 60% on 360, 35% on PS3, and 5% on PC. It’s still a significant number of sales, millions and millions, but clearly nothing close to the cascading downpours of gold bullion that they source from elsewhere. So if F2P can equal this, you can bet your mum’s bum that publishers will be all over it.
In discussing whether AAA game budgets are getting out of control, Gibeau explains that EA’s own game label has dropped from 20 releases a year to six (cripes), and acknowledges the “top twenty market” of modern gaming. But then he adds,

“But at the same time we’re aggressively investing in things that are very low cost like free-to-play. The free-to-play group inside of EA Games is growing extremely fast – we’ve got 17 million users, 4-5 services stood up right now. And if you get a couple of those to scale they’re as profitable as a console game.”

Real proper games you’re going to want to play are going to launch as “free”, as developers figure out the correct way to deal with micropayments and the like. And they’re making lots and lots of money. And money attracts publishers, and that means the PC will be getting some of that attention it’s been missing from the bigger names in the business.

It’s happening.

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