Ubisoft wants free-to-play model in more $60 games

Another major publisher finds its next buffet

Free-to-play was a good idea, and some surprisingly great games were coming out of the market. Then the big publishers took notice and decided to go overboard. Not only is Ubisoft planning a slew of F2P games to flood the market, it wants to go one step further — filling $60 retail games with microtransactions. 

“There will be free-to-play on consoles,” said Ubi’s Alain Martinez. “But in the future, with games like Sleeping Dogs, we could see more opportunity for $60 games to learn from the free-to-play model.

“The next generation will offer more and more item-based content. This will benefit our games’ profitability.”

I was a big proponent of the free-to-play model for a little while, until the likes of Ubisoft got a sniff. Now I just know the market will be exploited without a sense of consequence, until the entire model loses all credibility and inevitably dies. Oh, and any publisher expecting me to pay $60 for a “free-to-play” game can f*ck off right now. It was tacky in Sleeping Dogs, and I dread to think how much worse it’ll get.

Ubisoft: Free-to-play will affect all of our games [VentureBeat]