SEGA post 2012 Q1 report

[Shigs]

Kingdom Conquest is marginal at best. Even if it did make double its budget, that is not much to brag about. Although I am not sure where you get that figure. It is a free game that 'sold' over a million, it does not seem that big of a hit. It was free.

You don't understand how the "Free to Play" model works. Many games have this form of model now. You play it for free BUT, you are usually either limited in how far you can progress with out pay, or it takes much, much longer to progress further in the game with purchasing some virtual items. Look at Farmville on Facebook. Free to play, but to get some major virtual goodies, you have to pay for them and pay they do. From what I hear, the guys who made Farmville made more bank than EA last year. All on a so-called "free" game.

Spiral Knights is "Free" too, but there's some really good virtual stuff that you can only get through paying. I was on the Spindash Podcast recently (episode isn't up yet) and GX Echidna told me Spiral Knights was his current favorite game. I asked him if he spent any money in the game. He said $30. If less than half the people playing these free games are spending money inside of it, then they are making huge cash.

Also, see Little Big Planet. When it went free thanks to the Sony welcome back promotion. They saw sales of LBP DLC skyrocket. Why, because 1.5 million new users got the game and wanted to get the extra stuff.

[max_cady]

@Shigs

Don't get me started with that. The Free-to-Play model seems like a nice idea in theory, but the difference is that the game isn't a game per say. It's almost like a service, if you want somethin' extra, open your wallets.

Some FB games like Farmville and especially the new FB sweetheart, Gardens of Time, which actually has missions with storyline, that has you invested, it's a garanteed money maker, since you do have to buy a lot of FB credits to get to those major missions.

If you start tallying up all that mullah, I would've bought 5 Xbox 360 games.