PopCap CEO Dave Roberts states that Plants vs. Zombies 2 has already surpassed the performance of the original. Following Plants vs. Zombies 2 launch on the 15th of August, which is now tied with a free-to-play model Roberts has, in a interview with GeekWire defended this choice and points towards the great success of the game in its first hours of sale as a testimony to this fact.
Roberts suggested that PopCap has had, “a lot of flak” due to this change in business model but this has not hurt early sales.“I don’t think anyone at EA has seen anything go up that fast to the top downloads…it took us five months to hit in the first version…close to a year to hit that number on the PC.”
Roberts also points to the growing numbers of gamers joining the Plants vs Zombies 2 movement, with up to, “a million people in a day” joining up as a sign of it’s positive reception. He reinforces this by claiming that, “people used to complain about…(when we started) we sold $20 download games” and that the free-to-play model is thus more welcoming to their target audience.
However as can already be seen and what is indeed noted by Roberts is that the free-to-play is an obvious money maker, for example no paid app is even close to the app store’s grossing chart, which is dominated by freemium titles. “The sad truth,” he said, “people have decided that free-to-play is a better way for them to monetise.”
Roberts does stress that PopCap will attempt to retain the gaming experience that kept gamers addicted to the Plants vs. Zombies formula whilst also providing a positive customer experience yet only time will tell us if this is the truth.
Do you believe that the free-to-play model is nothing but bad news for what have been known to be great games such as Plants vs. Zombies, or do you think that there is a place for it to succeed in gaming world?
Let us know in the comments below!