TheNewsGuy
08-14-2008, 05:22 PM
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The next war "Battlefield" has waged, however, is a guerrilla assault on the free-to-play games business model. The game's publisher, Electronic Arts, is the first major U.S. videogame company to launch a free-to-play game, and it unveiled user statistics on its pilot game, "Battlefield Heroes," Thursday.
Redwood City, Calif.-based EA said "Heroes," which has operated in a private beta for the past three months, had 10,000 invited players that logged a collective 16,000 hours of game play in the last month. The company also said it plans to invite hundreds of thousands more players in the coming months and expects to officially launch "Heroes" by the end of the year.
Ben Cousins, executive producer for the "Battlefield" franchise, says the interest in the title has been overwhelming. A cartoony take on what has traditionally been a gritty shooter, "Heroes" focuses solely on the multiplayer matches that have made the franchise so popular. When the studio announced a contest for invites to the game, the site received some 8,000 posts in two days that ultimately crashed the "Heroes" site server. Currently, the "Heroes" site has 170,000 registered users and a quarter million page views a day.
As a free game, "Heroes" will tap into banner advertising and sales of virtual goods, such as helmets, parrots and guns, for its revenue. EA declined to share its financial expectations for the game, but Cousins says that as long as 5% of players are spending money (which in other titles works out to $10 to $15 a month per player), it'll keep the service going.
Read more here... (http://www.n4g.com/pc/News-184060.aspx)
The next war "Battlefield" has waged, however, is a guerrilla assault on the free-to-play games business model. The game's publisher, Electronic Arts, is the first major U.S. videogame company to launch a free-to-play game, and it unveiled user statistics on its pilot game, "Battlefield Heroes," Thursday.
Redwood City, Calif.-based EA said "Heroes," which has operated in a private beta for the past three months, had 10,000 invited players that logged a collective 16,000 hours of game play in the last month. The company also said it plans to invite hundreds of thousands more players in the coming months and expects to officially launch "Heroes" by the end of the year.
Ben Cousins, executive producer for the "Battlefield" franchise, says the interest in the title has been overwhelming. A cartoony take on what has traditionally been a gritty shooter, "Heroes" focuses solely on the multiplayer matches that have made the franchise so popular. When the studio announced a contest for invites to the game, the site received some 8,000 posts in two days that ultimately crashed the "Heroes" site server. Currently, the "Heroes" site has 170,000 registered users and a quarter million page views a day.
As a free game, "Heroes" will tap into banner advertising and sales of virtual goods, such as helmets, parrots and guns, for its revenue. EA declined to share its financial expectations for the game, but Cousins says that as long as 5% of players are spending money (which in other titles works out to $10 to $15 a month per player), it'll keep the service going.
Read more here... (http://www.n4g.com/pc/News-184060.aspx)