Well, is the free bandwagon gathering steam today or what? First we have the Halo: Reach demo being made available for nuts, and now we have word of Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Online free-to-play game being announced. This is Ubisoft’s first foray into the free-to-play game market, where the game will hope to bridge the hardcore console games and the free-to-play online games markets, where the latter really seems to be hitting it big in Asia.
Ubisoft’s testing of such waters is definitely something of a surprise, considering most of the typical games these days on consoles cost considerably more. Guess in this case, Ubisoft wants to offer more perceived value as you can always play online for free, but when it comes to virtual goods, that’s where they will ring up the cash registers.
Console game makers are currently exploring the free-to-play hardcore online games genre as well, ranging from Electronic Arts with their Battlefield Heroes game to Activision Blizzard’s upcoming Call of Duty Online. Debuting later this year as a downloadable and dynamic title, it will come with cool tactics and a detection device that enables players to view locations of enemy players for a number of seconds amongst others.
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