Pay to Play

nihilist_1137 writes: "Zdnet has a story on how companies are looking at making gamers pay to play online games. It goes over the problem of how to make a game great but yet at the same time appealing to people who pick it up."

Comments

Blizzard had it right.

[Restil]

Sell a game in the stores, and allow online play for free. If as a company you excersize due diligence and keep creating new great games, the "lifetime play" for older games will be a non-issue as fewer and fewer users will play the older games to play the new ones. You keep a steady revenue stream from new games. This also keeps you from getting caught in the trap of wanting to milk old games for all eternity. Keeps you competitive.

However, if it gets to the point, where like with quake, I can't host my own server and have people play off of it for free, then we have issues. Blizzard's model (as far as I know) never supported any type of network play (other than local) except through their servers. There were free servers released for some games that permitted it, but the company itself never wanted to lose control of that.

Of course, I think they brought in SOME revenue from banner ads in the waiting rooms. I'm not sure what other software companies are doing.

-Restil