With game piracy hurting the PC gaming business, Electronic Arts has announced a shift in payment models with the newest Battlefield series. Battlefield Heroes will be one of the largest franchises in the game industry to go free with advertisements between game levels and in online forums for the game and micro-transactions of $2 and $5 for upgrades to weapons or armor.
"As an organization we felt that this was something that would have mass appeal," said Tammy Schachter, a spokeswoman for EA. "Traditionally, you buy a game in a store and you put it in your gaming system or computer and you pay $50 or $60 for the game. This is a downloadable, entirely free product based on the Battlefield franchise."
With micro-transactions and in-game advertisements a key part of the casual games industry it is interesting to see an established core game publisher start to use these models. This maybe the largest test to see if the core game industry can succeed with an ad-supported, micro-transaction based title. The success or failure of this experiment may have implications for the casual games market.
12 March 2008
Newest Battlefield Goes Free With Micro-transactions
