Ubisoft Learning Awful Things From F2P Model

Hey, you know what's cool? Being up front about wanting to squeeze every penny you can from a consumer.

Oh wait no, that's not very awesome at all. But recently Ubisoft talked about what they've learned from free to play games, which often feature microtransactions. This way, a developer can justify letting a player play a game for free: they'll be enticed to spend money in other ways. Sometimes more money than they would an actual release, especially if the game is inbalanced and not actually as free to play as it's supposed to be.

PC Gamer reports that Ubisoft recently made the following remarks:

“Free-to-play is a very flexible business model,” Perotti said. “The player has the capability to spend more than in a traditional model. We can control everything from the pricing to marketing as if we were an online store.”

“With games like Watch Dogs, we could see more opportunity for $60 games to learn from the free-to-play model,” Martinez added. “The next generation will offer more and more item-based content. This will benefit our games’ profitability.”

Personally I think that unless you're offering something of value, don't put microtransactions in your fully priced game. We'll see if Ubisoft manages to "pair" fully priced games with microtransactions in a way that works.