Today THQ released a press release with some information about internal studio realignment and their focus on key strategic initiatives. The release talked about the closure of two of its studios and how resources would be better aligned to server the company’s future portfolio of games.
However toward the end THQ gave this statement about Warhammer 40K: Dark Millennium when talking about their future key strategies.
3) create an ongoing digital revenue stream with the launch of the company’s MMO, Warhammer 40,000: Dark Millennium(TM) Online; and 4) continue to drive digital end-user sales through existing channels as well as through the upcoming re-launch of THQ.com.
Whether this refers to Warhammers subscriptions or if plans to open up an in-game item shop has yet to be determined, but it looks like THQ wants to start concentrating more on digital revenue streams. If your goal is to increase digital revenue one way to accomplish that is to go Free-to-Play and open up a shop. So this could very well mean that we would could be seeing both Warhammer Online and War 40K Online both going F2P in the future.