Champions Online Free-to-Play Interview

A week ago, we got word Champions Online is going free to play, and now Eurogamer offers some comments from Cryptic head Jack Emmert on why free to play is, in his view, the only real way to go.

“You’re skating up hill if you don’t offer a free-to-play option,” Cryptic Studios head Jack Emmert told Eurogamer. “You’re skating up against World of Warcraft and theoretically SWTOR. That’s your competition. And unless you think your games are as good or better than those – because you also have to overcome their reputation – it’s going to be highly unlikely a large number of people, meaning 200,000-plus, are going to be willing to subscribe to your game. And a lot of companies are making $50-60-70 million bets, and I just don’t see that there’s a market for their products.”

He added: “I don’t foresee anything toppling those [WOW and SWTOR] at the moment. You either build-big or go home; you have to spend at least $50 million on your product, and even then it’s a basic proposition. When you come out, you’ve got to not only beat World of Warcraft as it was when it launched, you’ve got to beat all the developments it has had since then. That’s really, really hard.”