IndustryGamers has an interesting story up today about how Sony had originally wanted LittleBigPlanet to adopt the free-to-play business model. Then-president Phil Harrison is the one who suggested it, which means he would have been somewhat ahead of his time in this thinking. LittleBigPlanet was released in 2008, when the free-to-play business model was just starting to gain traction.
The article doesn't say why Sony eventually decided to release the game as a traditional retail product, but I think it was a missed opportunity. Sony could have emerged as a leader in this market. I very much believe the free-to-play or freemium business model will be the dominant one in the industry in a few years.
Sony is, of course, toying with free-to-play on PS3 now with the release of Free Realms. While that game has been hugely popular on PC, Sony has yet to release details on how it's doing on the PS3. Of course, the PSN outage has likely had an impact on that. I can only hope they've got more free-to-play stuff in the pipe for PS3.
1 comments:
I agree wholeheartedly. Sony really dropped the ball there. I'm not much into Sony products but I do keep track of their stats. It probably would have been a great business opprotunity for them.
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