Electronic Arts storms the F2P Beach
Alright, so I discovered this after reading David’s post up over Here. This both amuses and surprises me. It amuses me because a lot of people saw that eventually the big companies would eventually make the leap into free game model market. It surprises me that it’s EA that’s taking the plunge. Considering EA’s history, perhaps it’s just some amount of that cynical me peeking out from the shadows, knowing that they’ve made some very large game screw ups in the past. At least that’s a opinion anyways, that they’ve screwed up some games and what not in recent years.
Now of course that doesn’t mean this new step is going to be a sweeping success, but the thing about F2P games, if it’s complete crap, people might play it anyway just cause it’s free and they still may drop money for these things. Fascinating how that works sometimes, so while it’s a big step and perhaps might kick of a war with retailers it makes a kind of sense to me to edge towards this market that’s growing every year, just that it’s limited by the offerings that we have in the West so far.
Will this spark a big trend change in the Industry? Probably, but it won’t be right away, the old boys club still had to sit and piss and moan about change and some companies are going to just hide behind their blast doors and wait to see what happens. There’s a problem with that though. Firstly that means there will be a slow trickle of a new generation of free games coming out, which of course sucks in terms of diversity. On the other hand, if EA and anyone else of the big boys takes the step and really hit it off big, then we’ll see a virtual flood of new free western games, which will then offer to much, leave our heads spinning and the profits for these companies may appear disappointing at first. (Not that I much mind that part) But still, they’ll have a knee-jerk reaction and think they made a mistake. Hopefully they’ll clue in and remember that new market explosions take time to settle down after the initial feeding frenzy.
Either way, with EA’s announcement, I think it’s safe to say the chum’s in the water, and we’ll start smelling blood soon enough.
