Gree: The free-to-play argument is over

Freemium model will force changes to conventional games in future, says David McCarthy

Mobile developers must embrace free-to-play to succeed, according to Japanese mobile gaming service Gree.
The publisher's head of EMEA developer relations, David McCarthy, made the assertion at a UKIE-backed event last week.

“It requires a very, very different mind-set and business model to conventional boxed product gaming. The decision on whether to go free-to-play, certainly on mobile, is dead,” he said.
“There’s no argument – free-to-play is the model that the industry is moving towards. If you look at the [games in the] top grossing charts the vast majority of them are free-to-play, and it’s very few people who can make pay-per-download work as well for them as free-to-play in the mobile space.”
Gree now has over 23m users in its home country of Japan, and since its acquisition of mobile social platform OpenFeint it now claims to reach over 200m users worldwide.

http://www.develop-online.net/news/4...play-on-mobile