Namco Bandai Criticizes ‘Free-to-Play’ Trend

During the Cloud Gaming Europe Convention, Namco Bandai's senior vice president for Europe, Olivier Comte, criticized the free-to-play trend claiming that it would likely be very damaging to the industry in the long run.

"Free-to-play games can't be high quality," Comte said on the topic of gaming fees. "We need to put certain value on certain work."

With the growing popularity of cheap iOS and android games along with free social networking games, consumers’ expectations have changed significantly. Comte suggested that publishers need to tackle this issue to ensure that their revenues do not collapse.

"We have 2,000 or 3,000 developers. We need to put certain value on certain work," he said. "When you're a big company… you can't take risks too quickly, you can't make a change just because there's a fashion for a couple of years; you want to be there in 20 or 30 years."

Though most certainly true in a lot of cases, I think claiming that free-to-play models can't produce any high-quality games is a little far fetched. It announced yesterday that Star Trek: Online has moved to the free-to-play strategy, so maybe Namco can give them a call to see what's shakin'! It's also worth noting that Guild Wars 2, like its predecessor, will also be free-to-play, and that game looks incredible.

Source: Gamespot