According to Anthem director Jonathan Warner and lead producer Ben Irving, the preliminary stages of the game’s creation saw BioWare and EA discussing whether or not a free-to-play model would be viable for the game before abandoning the concept altogether. During these talks, the companies eventually decided that such a model wouldn’t be fitting for a AAA release, as the development team would have to forego providing a service model beneficial for players and not have free DLC. Fully elaborating on the matter, Irving said:
Without a doubt, free-to-play business models for video games can be incredibly lucrative and serviceable to players, as it opens up the experience to practically anyone with a stable Internet connection and a PC, console, or even mobile gaming device. Fortnite is a solid example of this, but not every game can reach the success of the Battle Royale title, much less maintain such frequent serviceability to its fans, and Anthem would have been risking fiscal insolvency should it have put itself in the same free-to-play arena as the Epic Games title.
All things considered, it’s safe to presume that most players will be glad that EA and BioWare decided to eschew any free-to-play designs for Anthem, and opted for a more traditional business model instead so as to set certain levels of expectations for the release. And as previously mentioned, the open demo is live this weekend, so players on all platforms will get to see if the game’s base contents should be worth a Day One purchase. Hopefully, the infinite load screen problem will be an infrequent occurrence this time around so gamers can get unfettered access to the demo’s content.
Anthem is scheduled to release on February 22, 2019 for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.
Sourc: EDGE (via GamingBolt)
