Tencent has acquired an exclusive license for Crytek’s upcoming free-to-play online FPS Warface in China. While details are still sparse, the pre-alpha footage makes it look like your typical military FPS. It will have PVE with “dramatic” co-op missions and the usual PVP stuff.
“Boring!” you might say. But keep in mind that Tencent is China’s biggest internet company based on market valuation. Their Internet Value-Added Services (IVAS) division has a number of games that are already hugely popular, notably the South Korean FPS CrossFire, and the division made over $1 billion in revenues in the first half of 2010 alone.
Growth for their IVAS division was expected to slow down for the second half of 2010, mostly because it grew as fast as it did already, yet grew regardless in Q3. Warface might shake things up even more when it is released in Asia. And if it performs even better than CrossFire? Don’t be surprised to see more and more free-to-play FPS’s pop up in the US and Europe from 2012 onwards; EA’s Battlefield Heroes has been doing pretty well already.
Call of Duty: F2P anyone?
