Ubisoft: Free-to-Play Will Influence All Its Future Games - Polidicks

[quote]During an investor conference call today, Ubisoft’s chief financial officer Alain Martinez claimed that the free-to-play model will influence all of its future games.The French publisher detailed the benefits of giving away the razor only to charge for the blades. “Free-to-play is a very flexible business model,” said Stéphanie Perotti, Ubisoft’s worldwide director of online. “The player has the capability to spend more than in a traditional model.” Ubisoft claims it can reach a wider audience with free-to-play. According to the company, The Settlers 7 (the last retail release in the strategy franchise) is available in five different languages and 28 countries. Meanwhile, The Settlers Onlline is accessible anywhere in the world, and the development team localized it for nine languages, with more to come. “The Settlers Online is set to make more money in four years than the Settlers brand did on PC over nine years,” Perotti said. Mastering free-to-play required that Ubisoft learn a new set of skills. The software producer is focusing on mastering marketing and micro-monetization that’s very different when compared to traditional retail releases. “We can control everything from the pricing to marketing as if we were an online store,” Perotti said. When asked directly about free-to-play on next-gen consoles from Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony, Martinez didn’t back down. “There will be free-to-play on consoles,” Martinez said. “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,” Martinez. “This will benefit our games’ profitability.” [U][B]So, some games may still cost $60, but they’ll at least have plenty of fun micro-transactions.[/B][/U] Ubisoft expects to earn €50 to €60 million just from its free-to-play and casual games in fiscal 2013. That’s up from €20 million in 2012. That kind of money is going to turn heads in the company, and Ubisoft has obviously implemented a standing order for all of its teams to implement some of the lessons its learned from free-to-play. [URL="http://venturebeat.com/2012/09/27/ubisoft-f2p-ideas-in-all-games"]VentureBeat[/URL][/quote] *sigh*

Why has the majority of the games industry gone fucking brain dead in a pointless effort to appeal to casual gamers.

Both EA and Ubisoft need to eat shit and die. If the fuckers ruin Anno I swear...

Goddammit, no. I don't want to have to keep paying money for shit that should have been unlocked in the first place. It's one thing if a few months down the road, that the devs want to expand on a certain story arc, that's cool, but I don't want to have to pay to get some weapon/item that shipped with the game.

[QUOTE=Dan2593;37832296]Why has the majority of the games industry gone fucking brain dead in a pointless effort to appeal to casual gamers.[/QUOTE] Capitalism.

Just as bad as having to be online to play your games.

IMO DLC, F2P models and microtransactions in general are the worst thing that has happened to the gaming industry ever. I'd rather pay $60 for all the content you have and pay another $60 a year later for a brand new game with brand new content, thank you very much

As long as the games are actually good and not horribly pay2win.

[quote]“This will benefit our games’ profitability.”[/quote] And will harm your game's playability. Which harms profitability.

Settlers Online is actually very cool, much better than other shitty browser games. At times I even forget it's a browser game.

Typical capitalist short term-ism Have fun Ubisoft :)

It didn't need to happen this way. Why didn't we stop it?

[URL="http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/09/05/ubisoft-drm-piracy-interview/"]We realized our DRM was a mistake but our talking heads are required to never acknowledge this, even though we've all but outright said it was retarded. We also have a whole bunch of stats that we can't actually show you to support this nonsensical proposition, but TRUST US GUYS, we totally aren't making shit up.[/URL] Oh yeah, we also totally aren't going to try and dick our players over again any time soon. TRUST US GUYS. Yeah... No. Fuck off. I've not bought a ubisoft title in years, and this reaffirms my decision.

Meh, we'll roll out of this phase just like every other big industry. Except the automotive industry. That shit still chokes on dick.

Guess what guys, You are getting Beyond Good & Evil 2! It's going to be based on Facebook social games where you can invite your friends into your game to take as many pictures of creatures as possible. And for just $4.99 you can purchase the Jade/Pey'j follower pack. It's going to be browser based so it's definitely going to be online only; this will also prevent piracy.

Im okay with FTP as long as they also continue to make Standard Model games as well. Like Valve. Even though TF2 was first Standard... I like that its now F2P because ive gotten so many of my friends hooked on it and now they are getting into PC gaming because of it. Just saying ya know.

[QUOTE=Thlis;37832576]Guess what guys, You are getting Beyond Good & Evil 2! It's going to be based on Facebook social games where you can invite your friends into your game to take as many pictures of creatures as possible. And for just $4.99 you can purchase the Jade/Pey'j follower pack. It's going to be browser based so it's definitely going to be online only; this will also prevent piracy.[/QUOTE] what are you doing no stop

[QUOTE=M.Ciaster;37832583]what are you doing no stop[/QUOTE] You're right, I'm sorry. It costs $4.99 for Jade and Pey'j each. To unlock new maps it's $10. You can also upload the pictures you take to your facebook account. We think instagram-like features would really help personalize the photos you take. Don't forget to buy the camera memory upgrade for only $2.99.

I hope they follow what valve does with tf2. but the probably have tons and tons of paid content that they'll force the people to buy.

[QUOTE=Thlis;37832606]You're right, I'm sorry. It costs $4.99 for Jade and Pey'j each. To unlock new maps it's $10. You can also upload the pictures you take to your facebook account. We think instagram-like features would really help personalize the photos you take. Don't forget to buy the camera memory upgrade for only $2.99.[/QUOTE] aaaAAAAAARGh please i cant take it anymore

ac3 is pretty much the last product from them I'll ever buy, unless they come out with more AC if they fuck up ac4 though.. "So, some games may still cost $60, but they’ll at least have plenty of fun micro-transactions." [URL="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nGT4dV4s1w"]Seriously[/URL] do you even know what you're saying when you say "fun".

[QUOTE=PN_Redux;37832670]I hope they follow what valve does with tf2. but the probably have tons and tons of paid content that they'll force the people to buy.[/QUOTE] And TF2 totally doesn't have you grind the shit out of the game for days or put up with the awful trading community to get an item you want, right? The only reason the F2P model works in TF2 is because it's a testbed and Valve couldn't care less about the money they get from the store, given that their main source of income is their share of the steam sales, and because they have no shareholders, which also provides them with the money required to do crazy and risky shit (portal) that other companies can't afford to do because they need their games to sell to have cash themselves and please their shareholders.

Its nice to see PC gaming get more popular but not like this. I want good single player experiences and those are becoming more and more rare. [editline]28th September 2012[/editline] [QUOTE=Dan2593;37832296]Why has the majority of the games industry gone fucking brain dead in a pointless effort to appeal to casual gamers.[/QUOTE] Because the number of casual gamers are huge compared to hardcore and because casual gamers are easier to please.

[QUOTE=latin_geek;37832910]And TF2 totally doesn't have you grind the shit out of the game for days or put up with the awful trading community to get an item you want, right?[/QUOTE] Thanks to services like TF2Scrap (thanks again, Geel9), I don't have to deal with either of those for weapons. Hats are still annoying, but they're only cosmetic.

lol guess i won't be playing any future ubisoft games then

Plenty-of-fun micro-transactions~

its about time I get a different hobby

Oh ubisoft

I read the title as Pay-to-Win. I'm not even kidding.

[QUOTE=PN_Redux;37832670][B]I hope they follow what valve does with tf2[/B]. but the probably have tons and tons of paid content that they'll force the people to buy.[/QUOTE] Subsidize all the content for hats?