Securing a larger audience with lower pricing is a ”really useful thing,” he argues, saying it pays more in the end. Games as a service are something critical too.
In fact Riccitiello points to World of Warcraft, SimCity and GTA Online has being rather embarrassing escapades as they all ”fell over at launch” when they built their ‘services’.
”Another thing that console and PC guys could and should learn is variable pricing,” John Riccitiello told Gaming Insiders Summit. ”$60 is a giant FU to a very large number of people.”
”There’s not been a console game with even half as many installs as Clash of Clans. Puzzle & Dragons has got more installs than any console game in history. Getting a larger audience through variable pricing is a really useful thing.”
The games industry in the more traditional circles has a lot to learn about games as a service.
”More than anything, what the traditional game industry should learn from mobile is it’s really about service,” he said. ”It’s an ongoing business. You’d think we would have learned this some time ago, but I find it interesting that WoW and SimCity and GTA and Starcraft and many other games all fell over at launch when they put their service components together.”
”Some of the biggest brands - I’d argue almost all the biggest brands - fell over from lack of the testing and research that mobile people do in the regular course of their day.”
Clash of Clans is a mobile title from Supercell, as is Puzzle & Dragons from GungHo Online.
