Nexon is a big publisher who makes MMOs like Maple Story, Combat Arms and others and can be classified as a big giant with significant revenues. It’s CEO Daniel Kim has mentioned in an interview with GamesIndustry that consoles must embrace the free-to-play model or face extinction–a comment echoed by many people.
“Console developers are starting to realise that as well, that unless they make accommodations or think about changing their own business model they’re going to quickly go the way of the dinosaurs,” he said.
“The business model it really makes sense. It’s really hard to beat free-to-play as an offering. The console guys are starting to realise that, but they also have a challenge in that they have a vested interest in an existing business model of packages.
“I know it’s tough for them to just cut off hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue to say ‘OK, we’re going to go free-to-play and make our bed here’ because that’s going to piss off a lot of people who they already have an existing business relationship with.”
I somehow disagree with him in the sense that the console makers aren’t exploring free-to-play model–Sony is doing that–but the problem here is the closed business model still makes a lot of revenue for these platform holders and it will be a while before we will see a lot of free-to-play games on consoles.
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