LONDON GAMES CONFERENCE 2011: Free-to-play model is the future, says Nicholas Lovell
Star Wars: The Old Republic will be the last big MMO, Gamebrief's Nicholas Lovell has said.
Speaking at the London Games Conference, Lovell said he believes that current and imminent subscription based games such as World of Warcraft will be the last big subscription-based MMOs.
He said that free-to-play is the future of the industry, and subscription underestimates how much money people are winning to spend on a free game.
“We’ve underestimated the people that are prepared to spend $100 a month if you allow them to,” said Lovell.
He cited the success of Tiny Tower developer NimbleBit, which had received 50 per cent of its revenue from all its free-to-play titles from the eight per cent of users that bought extra content on their games at a price of $29.99.
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He said one of the big problems prohibiting the subscription model was that most people have a short memory, meaning customers will only take up a set number of game-related subscriptions.
“Anytime we have a list of more than seven things to do we think there’s an infinite number of things to do. There is only room for seven subscriptions in your life says Sony,” Lovell said.
“To get your subscription adopted you have to persuade them to drop another one.”
He added: “To get people in, you’ve got that barrier you’ve created by that subscription.”
The points raised by Lovell reflect the continued decline of World of Warcraft’s customer base, which has lost almost two million customers since October 2010.
I recently unsubbed my WoW sub due to dissatisfaction with the current content and future expansion, but I repicked up my LOTRO immediately after to pad my time before SWTOR.
I never realized that even in my own mind, I wouldn't sub for more than 1 game at a time, and this article really brings that too light.
Unfortunately since this is likely very very true in the real world of marketting, subscription based games are likely to go the way of the Dodo...
Goodbye value, hello gouging =/
I will never spend a $100 a month to play one game and I spend a lot of my disposable income on games. If that means no more MMOs for me than so be it. This guy is out of his mind if he thinks I will pass up 20 games in a year for just one game.
Honestly, his take on gamers is kind of insulting. There is no way I wouldn't notice that I am giving some crappy WoW clone $100 a month.
Show me a free online game that even comes close to the profit margin of WoW. WoW is losing players because it is almost 7 years old and is no longer enjoyable for those who can't raid once to twice per week.
im 50/50 on this i agree with most of what you say area man if wrath of the lich king was still the current expansion then i would still be playing cata killed warcraft not many could disagree. i cant wait for star wars its new, fresh and i have no problem paying the £10 a month in actual fact i could keep 3 of 4 games on the go each month but there arent any decent games out and at the moment im no subbed to any game just playing css untill star wars is out and cod ofc (and skyrim when i get it on tuesday) so yeah warcraft is dying 25k rogue to a 130k rogue in 1 expansion wtf is with that ?
While there are many free to play games out there compared to subscription based, I would like to point out that currently World of Warcraft, Rift, Lord of the Rings Online (VIP Member Account) and Everquest still run on subscriptions showing that while free to play might be a good model according to the author, however if the subscription based model fits more with a companies plans then it too will have a subscription.
Free to play these days are actually more of a mark of failure in all honesty. When a game cannot have enough subscribers to support it, it slips and becomes free to play so as to make money off the few who play it instead of the masses that they wanted. Even Blizzard came out and said that if World of Warcraft fell below a certain amount they'd have no choice.
Lets see how free to play games make money; through cash shops. Sure, you might spend $100 dollars on a single game, but if that was all you wanted in terms of content then that's all the company will get from you instead of the $140-150 they could've gotten from you
I'll use myself as an example here. I've spent nearly $600 over 7 years on subscription fees for World of Warcraft. I also used to play Guild Wars, which is free to play after buying the game which was $40, I never bought anything from their cash shop. As for another free to play game that will go unnamed which content was only available from a cash shop, I have dropped little over $86 and have no intention of spending more on it since that was all the content I wanted and that interested me. So which company made more from me? The one with game that had a subscription or the ones where it was free to play? I'll let you decide.
