BioWare Doctors Defend Subscription Model, Tease Free-to-play “Re-imagining” of Fondly Remembered IP

During a chat with Joystiq, BioWare’s co-founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk defended Star Wars: The Old Republic’s subscription model, claiming that, while the market is getting more fragmented, “the core still works”:

“I’m not saying it’s better or worse. It just doesn’t supplant the other things. ‘Cause we can do some things no one else can,” Zeschuk added. In his eyes, a free-to-play dev isn’t able to throw the same amount of resources and time at an MMO project, and that marks a big differentiation between the two business models. “The free-to-play people can’t invest to the level we can invest, and can’t create something of the size and scale of something we can create,” he said. The idea that free-to-play will take over all other MMO business models, he said is, “from a business perspective, ridiculous.”

Furthermore, they and also teased a free-to-play MMO re-imagining of an IP “that people have a lot of fond memories around”, which Joystiq speculates may be Jade Empire:

Before moving off the subject, Muzyka managed to sneak in a bit of a tease regarding BioWare’s future work in the free-to-play space. “You can re-imagine things and kinda envision them in different ways,” he said of the business model’s advantages. “We have some other stuff we haven’t announced yet coming from our play-for-free team that I’m really excited about. It’s gonna bring back some IP that people have a lot of fond memories around.” As with most of our BioWare speculation, we’re gonna go ahead and hope for some form of a Jade Empire “re-imagining.” Pretty much anything Jade Empire, is what we’re saying.

Considering we are talking about a supposedly fondly remembered IP, we hope it will receive the attention it deserves despite being free-to-play.