One of the wonderful things about playing on the PC is that when you have a free-to-play game available that you want to play, a subscription isnt required to do so. That will, unfortunately, not be the case with Wargamings upcoming port of World of Tanks for the Xbox 360, which will require an Xbox Gold membership to play anything more than a 7-day free trial, something that rival Sony will be a bit relaxed on with games like PlanetSide 2 and DC Universe Online on the upcoming PlayStation 4 console. Its something that Wargaming CEO Victor Kislyi admits that he is not happy about but willing to tolerate, and maybe even show Microsoft a thing or two about the free-to-play side of the industry..
"With Microsoft, unfortunately it's not 100 per cent free-to-play because it requires the Gold subscription to Xbox Live membership," Kislyi said in an interview with Gamesindustry International. "But that's a Microsoft requirement which is valid for us and for Activision and for EA and all other partners. They cannot drop it for us because they would have to drop it for everyone and it would be a total mess for them.
Kislyi stated that he would much rather add another 30-40 million silver members to the playerbase but the call, in this case, is Microsofts.
Its always good when a game can expand to other platforms, even one that is often as restrictive as Microsoft's console barrier, which requires what is sometimes a lengthy certification process and fee for all updates and also imposes a 2GB limitation on patches, all things that are absent on the PC platform but can get into some tricky water on the console. Add to all of that the payment methods that will be available on the Xbox, the challenges are certainly not in short supply, but one that Wargaming seems ready to meet head on.
The World of Tanks Xbox 360 Edition was announced during Microsofts E3 2013 press conference and will be available this summer.
You can read the full E3 interview with Victor Kislyi over at Gamesindustry International for more.
Source: World of Tanks and the Free-to-Play Console War
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