The future is now – and free-to-play games are “inevitable” on the Xbox 360. That’s according to Hi-Rez Studios boss Todd Harris, whose own company is busy working on f2p title Tribes: Ascend for PC and possibly Xbox.

“It’s really just the degree to which the free-to-play model and, even more specifically, constant updates are at – kind of what level of support there is for Xbox, or even PlayStation at this point,” Harris tells Eurogamer.

“So the ability to patch frequently, the ability to have it be free-to-play so users can get a taste without any fee. At least from our conversations, both Sony and Microsoft are moving there strategically but there are still some things to be worked out on both the business side and the technical side and the certification side regarding frequency of patches.”

“They’re [Microsoft] seeing where the industry is going,” Harris adds. “It’s inevitable that Microsoft will move towards that because the industry is moving towards that, and once that groundwork has been laid we would be in a better position to consider Tribes: Ascend for Xbox.”

Meanwhile, that’s already something Microsoft is thinking hard about.

“We’re always looking at different models and different ways we can work with partners to bring content out,” Xbox guy Dennis Durkin explains, citing the ad-supported Kinect Fun Labs as an example.

“The strength we have in the business right now and the momentum we have allows us to experiment and try different things like that and see what consumers like and what they don’t like.

“If there are experiences that they like and want to download because it’s ad-supported versus what are they willing to pay for it… you’ll see us continue in the future to look for a lot of different models for distribution like that.”