Electronic Arts Boss Doubts Free-to-play Game Will Master Console

Much different from a few years ago, the market free-to-play has opened a new segmentation in the line casual. Now their popularity is exploding thanks to the high-selling platform sales mobile devices and smartphone. The question is, will they also be popular in next-gen consoles which was just released yesterday?

Although EA itself has released various freemium games (such as Battlefield Heroes to Battlefield Play4Free) and is responsible for the changing status of Plants vs. Zombies 2 becomes adopt method free-to-playEA Studios boss Patrick Söderlund doubts this success will follow if games the same was released for new platforms made by Sony and Microsoft.

The first thing he argued was because of the market consul itself is different from the market mobile devices. According to him mobile games much cheaper, "Just like movies. YouTube's service is free, but you still have to spend money to see the Gravity movie in theaters. One won't replace the other."

He then continued, "Just 18 months ago, mobile games can be downloaded for free. Now I dare say that 90 percent of them are freemium games. This change happened very quickly. I don't know if that will also apply to consul."

According to him of course there will be free-to-play games (F2P) was released there, but they have a different basic vision. According to him there will still be a lot gamer who are willing to pay a lot of money for full access to the game instead of playing F2P games. Just like me, Söderlund doesn't want to put it in terms free-to-play because basically they are not free at all.

Söderlund concludes, "I think all these payment models will go hand in hand. Some people will choose to pay US$60 and gain experience Gaming full. Sometimes when I play freemium games di mobile devices I feel that the creators just wanted more money. By paying $60 for Battlefield 4, I knew what I was getting. And I think a lot gamer out there who choose this. They won't hurt each other, they can coexist, maybe even a combination of the two will be born."

Unfortunately Söderlund forgot free-to-play games which exist in platform PC. They are dominated by names such as Riot Games (League of Legends), Valve (Dota 2) to Wargaming.net (World of Tanks). In last June, World of Tanks gamers reached more than 60 million people where League of Legends still dominates in total gamer more than 75 million people.

So big are these names that both Riot Games and Valve were able to start and fund the championship game each of them. This is also a positive result in the revolution free-to-play 2.0 what happens on the PC (item what you buy is only cosmetic). Even with the success of PlanetSide 2 on PC, Sony Online Entertainment plans to adopt it on the Sony PlayStation 4.

Total profit and player-base their success (Valve, Riot and others) makes us ask twice about Söderlund's claim...

With IGN.com. Header image: Gaming via Shutterstock.