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While PS4 and Xbox One win the majority of the headlines, it’s the PC that’s actually bossing the games market.
That’s according to Doom creator John Romero, who told Games Industry: "With PC you have free-to-play and Steam games for five bucks. The PC is decimating console, just through price. Free-to-play has killed a hundred triple-A studios.”
The numbers back him up, too. Earlier this month it was reported that in terms of games hardware along the PC market is worth over double the console sector.
PC continues to account for the lion’s share of global games revenues, too, thanks to titles such as League of Legend. All of which proves that despite the stigma, F2P remains hugely popular.
"Everybody is getting better at free-to-play design, the freemium design, and it’s going to lose its stigma at some point,” Romero added. People will settle into [the mindset] that there is a really fair way of doing it, and the other way is the dirty way. Hopefully that other way is easily noticeable by people and the quality design of freemium rises and becomes a standard. That’s what everybody is working hard on.
People are spending a lot of time trying to design this the right way. They want people to want to give them money, not have to. If you have to give money, you’re doing it wrong… For game designers, that’s the holy grail."
