News

EA: Most games will be free to play within 5-10 years

Micro-transactions are the future, Peter Moore says

EA: Most games will be free to play within 5-10 years
|

Electronic Arts has been embracing the DLC and free-to-play models in recent times, slowly but surely shifting its business to digital and mobile platforms.

That's because EA believes that free-to-play gaming is the future - in fact, the company's COO Peter Moore told Kotaku that he reckons the majority of games will be F2P within the next 5-10 years.

Discussing micro-transactions - where players pay during a game to unlock extra items, modes, or vanity wear - Moore explained, "I think, ultimately, those microtransactions will be in every game, but the game itself or the access to the game will be free."

He added: "I think there's an inevitability that happens five years from now, ten years from now, that, let's call it the client, to use the term, [is free]."

"It's free to me to walk into The Gap in my local shopping mall. They don't charge me to walk in there. I can walk into The Gap, enjoy the music, look at the jeans and what have you, but if I want to buy something I have to pay for it."

Survival of the freest

There will still be some full-price games out there to buy, but Moore believes even these games will have micro-transactions in them.

"It may well be that there will be games that survive and they are the $60 games, but I believe that the real growth is bringing billions of people into the industry and calling them gamers," he noted.

"Hardcore gamers won't like to hear this. They like to circle the wagons around what they believe is something they feel they have helped build - and rightly so."

Mike Rose
Mike Rose
An expert in the indie games scene, Mike comes to Pocket Gamer as our handheld gaming correspondent. He is the author of 250 Indie Games You Must Play.