Kobojo’s multi-national RPG with Zodiac: Orcanon Odyssey has had one mysterious aspect hanging above it: how are people going to pay for the game? Whether the game would be free-to-play or not seemed to be a question left unanswered. In a demo of the game, I could see that there were aspects that could easily be changed to free-to-play monetization. Well, Kobojo has just answered the question: Zodiac is going to be a premium game in North America and Europe.
This is a really interesting move, and it might be due to perceptions in the western world toward free-to-play, where it’s more accepted elsewhere. Free-to-play with a mobile centricity might not play so well on the Playstation and desktop platforms the game is also going to. While I’m not opposed to free-to-play, and wouldn’t mind seeing a game with these kinds of production values trying to sell free-to-play to a skeptical audience, this might be the smart call for this game. We’ll see just how well it turns out when it releases later this year.
