Reid believes Sony’s aggression in this area will pay dividends for the platform holder.
“It is always natural that the challenger in the console business is going to be more ambitious and take a few more risks than the leader. Last generation I was at Xbox and we were having our arses handed to us three to one. And Xbox was the one that was trying to do these crazy new things, what with Xbox Live and working with developers and their different ways. Five years later, things have changed and now Sony is being more aggressive and thinking more about how things are going forward. It is a very cyclical business and it feels like we are coming around to another big turn again.”
There are still some challenges around free-to-play on console, such as the need to migrate customers from one generation to
I think in the console space it was hard for some of the big publishers to get their brains around it until they saw some of the PC success stories.
“ David Reid, CCP
Happy Wars on Xbox 360 (above) and Dust 514 on PS3 (above right) are introducing free-to-play gaming to home consoles
the next, plus the ability to play with gamers on other platforms. But these issues are being addressed. Sony and Microsoft may be late to the party, but they’re catching up. Reid concludes: “I think in the console space it was hard for some of the big publishers to get their brains around it until they saw some of the PC success stories, like League of Legendsand World of Tanks.
“So now the console guys are saying that this is a big opportunity. You can argue that if
they had a way to monetise Call of Dutydifferently, then you’d have a lot more people playing and a lot of people willing to pay more than $60. “It is a bit of a foreign concept, having a game with five or 10 million players, with 80-plus per cent never spending any money. In the console space that has never happened. But we are seeing the change happen. We are living it right now. It happens faster on the PC than on the console, but the console guys are watching it very closely and will be involved a lot more with the next generation.”
New Nintendo 3DS® Gaming accessories for Christmas 2012