Topman EA: all games will be playable for free

Peter Moore, the chief operating officer of publisher Electronic Arts, believes all games will be free to play in the future. Publishers will make money from microtransactions, Moore thinks. The market can grow from that.

“I think it’s inevitable that within five to ten years the game client, the part you install, will be free,” said Peter Moore in an interview with Kotaku. Moore, second-in-line with the publisher, believes publishers will switch completely to the free-to-play model, where the game will be playable for free, but extras can be purchased through microtransactions. Moore thinks the market can only grow that way.

“I measure the success of games by the millions of people who have bought our games. Maybe by the time I retire, hundreds of millions are playing our games. Nobody buys it, hundreds of millions play it. We get 5.6 cents arpu per day from all those people. The vast majority never pay a cent for it and that’s fine. They add something to the ecosystem and the people who do pay, like to do it because it’s great to be at the top of a game played by, say, 55 million people.”

Moore likens the model to a shopping center. Customers can walk in and try items everywhere, but those who want them have to pay for them. The CEO does think that the hardcore gamers category will not be happy with the development. He also thinks that games labeled as hardcore are the most difficult to translate into a free-to-play model.