World of Tanks Dev ‘Not Happy’ With Xbox Live Gold Requirement

Wargaming CEO Victor Kislyi has told GamesIndustry he is "not happy about" the fact that Xbox 360 players will need an Xbox Live Gold subscription to play World of Tanks.

World of Tanks was announced for Microsoft's console at the company's pre-E3 media briefing earlier this month and Kislyi comments "With Microsoft, unfortunately it's not 100 percent free-to-play because it requires a Gold subscription for Xbox Live. But that's a Microsoft requirement which is valid for us and for Activision and for EA and all other partners. 

"They cannot drop it for us because they would have to drop it for everyone and it would be a total mess for them. This we have to tolerate, which I am not happy about," he continued. "I would rather add another 30-40 million non-Gold members who would monetise occasionally."

The PC version of World of Tanks boasts 60 million players while Xbox Live has 48 million subscribers though it's unclear how many of these are Gold members. There are 77 million Xbox 360s in the market.

Xbox Gold subscribers can now sign up to the game's beta.

Sony plan to charge for multiplayer with PlayStation Plus on PS4 but free-to-play games can be accessed by standard PlayStation Network subscribers on the console if developers wish.