Back in 1999, it all started with Codename Eagle, a PC game that laid the foundation for the Battlefield series, started by Battlefield 1942, released in September 2002 for the Mac and PC. Battlefield 1942 got two expansion packs, namely The Road To Rome and Secret Weapons of World War II. In March, 2004, Battlefield Vietnam arrived for US-based PC players, followed by Battlefield 2 and its three additional packs - Special Forces, Euro Force and Armored Fury. This game, revealed in June 2005, was also only available in the US, and was a PC-exclusive release. After that, we got Battlefield 2142 for the PC and Mac, together with a few console releases, like Battlefield: Bad Company. Now, Battlefield Heroes, currently under development, is expected to become “a phenomenon!”
In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Acclaim Inc founder and development veteran David Perry said the upcoming title in the Battlefield series will be “a huge hit,” expressing his “incredible faith that EA is going to pull this off.”
While a number of companies tried the free-to-play model before, EA’s try shouldn’t be underestimated, said Perry, adding that “EA is a retail-based company and that means they’re dealing with retailers everyday, they have constant retail issues that they’re dealing with, and the last thing in the world they want to do is announce that they’re going to go free-to-play… that’s not a good relationship builder with your retail sales teams.”
The basic idea behind the free-to-play model is that, in average, gamers spend more than <-336x280 Large Rectangle - right->the price of a retail single player release, or a multiplayer without any additional fees.
“I’ve made so many games and we never, ever had the idea that people would pay more than the price of the game for the game, no one would pay over USD 60 if it’s a USD 60 game. On our 2Moons game you’ve got people that spend USD 3000 happily, and if we had more stuff for them to buy they would buy it.
Could you imagine if you were to take Halo and offer it free-to-play? How much money do you think some people would spend on Halo if they had a huge array of items that they could buy? I recon there’s a cap out at about USD 10,000. When you think about it, the most we ask for is USD 60 and when you get those people spending a lot of money it brings the average up. On Acclaim Games right now we average USD 75 per person.”
Really impressive, if you ask me. Not quite unexpected, since even I spent a few bucks on such games, and I am not crazy at all about MMOs, as you probably know already.
At last, here’s what David Perry said about the future of Battlefield Heroes - “I think Battlefield Heroes is going to be a huge hit, it’s going to be a bit of a phenomenon… I have incredible faith that EA is going to pull this off.” If he’s right or not, that remains to be seen, but I hardly wait to get my hands on this piece of “cartoonish world war!”
