Everybody loves free stuff, and EA’s Frank Gibeau loves people who love free stuff too. That’s what the company’s free-to-play label is all about, anyway.
“We’re aggressively investing in things that are very low cost like free-to-play,” he says in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz. “The free-to-play group inside of EA Games is growing extremely fast – we’ve got 17 million users.
“Frankly when they get to scale, have huge audiences, are very profitable, they’re not cannibalising the main games and they actually reach markets that we’re not currently serving. With Need for Speed World, Russia and Brazil are number one and two – the Ukraine is in there too. I can’t sell packaged goods in those territories.
“It’s a very exciting time from our perspective because it’s not all about consoles,” he adds. “It’s about smartphones, tablets, free-to-play, browser, social.”
EA’s lineup of f2p titles includes Battlefield Heroes, Battlefield Play 4 Free, Battleforge, Lord of Ultima, and more.
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