Not hard to freak out when a top-class dev suddenly announces the biggest title they've produced including licensed tracks and cars as a FREE game... No such thing ... they've gotta make the money back and i'm absolutely not against dev's making a living .... but making ridiculous IAP amounts is just insulting .... I'll wait and see but i'll be a sad gamer if its hobbled without spending more than a 'reasonable' sum.
I have no doubt that RR3 will be a solid game as Firemint is probably my favorite iOS developer. It's just the IAPs that worry me, especially given EA's track record. Anyways, I'm looking forward to the previews and hoping that RR3 turns out to be balanced.
Well said. I mostly paid on games that I wanted at full-price. I do work in the AppStore business, and it's getting harder than ever to sell an app for $1.99 or $2.99. I refuse to switch my app to freemium unless there is a good way to do it. But admittedly, Paper was excellent at executing the freemium model for normal apps, since you only paid IAPs once to get the tools you want. But with games, it's completely different. F2P games are turning into scamming machines to grab money every single time you just wanted to play the game for a few minutes.
It would be good to see both a 'Paid' and 'Free To Play' version of the app in the App Store to give users the option. That way it would still be accessible to everyone and it would keep the core fans happy! I wonder how many people would switch to the 'Free To Play' pricing model if they had the choice between two versions? I actually saved some iTunes credit for this, however I don't invest any money into 'Free To Play' games. I generally don't like the interfaces that are riddled with adverts, iAPs and social networking 'Share' buttons.
Either way EA doesn't care about the money they won't recieve from a few toucharcaders. Not enough to change their pricing model anyway.
This is a ridiculous over-generalization. There are incredibly shitty F2P games just like there are incredibly shitty games you have to pay for. The good F2P games from developers who care about their players and community are never abusive, yet people love to constantly use the absolute worst examples of F2P whenever forming weird strawman arguments as to why F2P is so terrible. Everyone just needs to settle down and realize there's a wide spectrum of how F2P can work. Until we know how it does in RR3, there's no reason to fly so far off the handle.
It's dangerous when you have a company like EA that's all about money and very little about the fans. So based on their past F2P apps they've been meh. FireMonkey/FireMint makes great games and I expect an excellent game. For right now its easier to be skeptical because you just don't know how the F2P will be implemented. They could make it so that a bunch of cars you actually want costs $3 or $4 each. I mean, were sales so bad with 2 that EA didn't see it being worth their time to charge for it?
So why automatically jump to it being the worst implementation of F2P the world has ever seen with Firemonkeys draining your bank account each time you launch the game? We've been working with the guys at Firemint for years now. They're great people, they're not going to abuse their fans.
I don't know how to feel about this right now... I was totally pissed off when i heard that the latest Asphalt's price was 0,99 because i thought that it will be a total cash cow game (like a lot of other from GL) but i was able to finished and real enjoy the game (i uninstall it only when MW was out) without spending a single penny than the first 0.99. On the other hand there is the CSR Racing model that i totally hate it and i think is awful but i have hear that the game is way to profitable and some friends of mine they have spend 30-40$ on this... I hope the RR3 model will be closer to Asphalt model and not to CSR... Of course i am not happy with all these freemium news because instead of just waiting for one of the best games on iOS now i have to wait to see if the game will be playable without spending a small fortune... Will see...
I told you guys this three years ago, back when someone could have done something to prevent it. sadly, I was scorned and ridiculed out of the proverbial building. The freemium apocalypse is something that a blind man should have seen coming from a hundred miles away.
EA, I live for the day you close your doors ... it may not be in 12 months, it may not be in 10 years, but one day like the once mighty Psygnosis and SEGA you will be humbled by your own morbid greed.
