Speaking to OXM, Wargaming.net head Victor Kislyi recently stated that his game, World of Tanks, is proof that free to play games on the Xbox consoles are “the future”.
“Microsoft is a huge company, with lots of partners – publishers and developers. So yes, it does take some extra effort and political persistence to help them to realise how important it is for Microsoft and the Xbox platform to embrace free-to-play, digital, online elements.
“Because that’s the future and we have the freaking financial proof. That’s how it works, and not only us, there are a couple of other big companies that are killing it with free-to-play online.”
Of course, free to play can’t just benefit from selling tons of copies on launch day and then disappearing. These kinds of games need months and even years to become profitable.
“We can’t do everything right now, and that’s why we have to explain why we do what we do. This is our fate now, because these kinds of games aren’t your typical Christmas retail bonanza, gone off the shelf after a couple of months, and you’re working on another game. When you launch the game, that’s when the work starts – this was true of the PC game, and it’s true of the Xbox 360 game.”