The games industry, if you haven’t noticed, is moving steadily toward a free-to-play, microtransaction-driven business model. CCP’s DUST 514 and the recent Tribes: Ascend are just two examples of this trend, but as things roll forward you can expect to see even more developers and publishers looking to F2P as their primary revenue generator.

Even Epic Games, notorious in the community for its top-notch console development, sees the shift occurring. CEO Tim Sweeney had this to say on the subject at GDC Taipei:

“North American and European developers are far, far behind the state-of-the-art Asian business models. We've been building these games like Gears of War where you go into the store and you buy a piece of plastic! You just buy this DVD. That is going to change rapidly.”

He also noted that while Microsoft and Sony haven’t yet warmed to the idea of F2P titles on their consoles, they would likely be more open to the idea as the industry shifts. In fact, Sweeney sees no difference between the ideal pricing structures for PC, web, console and mobile:

“I think the console business we see in the United States and Europe will be just another platform. You should soon be able to ship a freemium game on PC, and on console, simultaneously. That is a very realistic possibility.”

To cap off his speech and sort of drive the point home, Sweeney also dropped a very interesting tidbit regarding the profitability of Epic’s games:

“The most profitable game we've ever made, in terms of man years invested versus revenue, is actually Infinity Blade. It's more profitable than Gears of War.”

If that doesn’t make other devs pay attention, I’m not sure what will.

[Gamasutra]

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