During an interview an EA executive stated he believes that the gaming industry is headed for a freemium business model because people like getting free games (revolutionary assessment) . EA Interactive senior VP Nick Earl went on to talk about how he thinks freemium is the future of the industry:
“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.
“I’ve wondered if freemium expands beyond the tablet, Facebook and smartphones, and out into consoles? I don’t think it’s impossible for that to happen.”
EA has a very big fondness of telling us all what the future of gaming holds; just last month EA executive, COO Peter Moore went on to talk about how he feels all games in the future will have microtransactions.
However, EA isn’t the only group of people who think freemium gaming is the future of the industry, BBC Worldwide’s EVP of digital entertainment and games Robert Nashak also spoke up on the issue:
“It turns out free is the price point people want to pay for games. What’s beautiful about it is the fermium 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.”
The funny thing about EA telling us which direction the future of the industry is headed is, it has been a long time since EA has been industry leaders. For the past ten years EA has done nothing but follow industry trends, they tend to just copy what the rest of the industry is doing. So it is a little ironic that EA is trying to be fortunetellers and predict where the industry is going, because they will just copy everyone else anyway.
Personally I don’t like microtransactions, I prefer paying all the money up front for a game. That is why I really hope microtransactions don’t take over the industry in the coming years. What are your thoughts on the future of the industry, do you think freemium is the way we are headed, will it be microtransactions or maybe something else entirely?
