Victor Kislyi, the ever outspoken CEO of Wargaming.net, doesn’t pull punches. He’s long held that console manufacturers need to open up the gates to the F2P business model or risk their future. Boasting over 60 million users for World of Tanks and growing popularity for World of Warplanes and 15 years in the business, Wargaming.net shouldn’t be taken lightly.
Kislyi and company announced at E3 2013 that WoT would be the first title from Wargaming.net to head to console, gracing the Xbox 360 this summer. But there’s a catch. According to Kislyi, the certification process adopted by Microsoft is so slow as to make it difficult for a F2P game to meet customer expectations. Especially on the common occurrence of an inadvertent bug during a patch.
“One of the biggest challenges with Microsoft was the frequency of updates because the QA process and certification process takes an extremely long time. Totally unacceptable for a meaningful free-to-play. We are working with them to do quicker updates.” Kislyi told Polygon.
Let’s not forget his justifiable unhappiness with players being required to have an Xbox Live Gold subscription to play. Kinda nerfs the true F2P mentality, don’t you think?
Wargaming and Microsoft are working on modifying the process, which speaks volumes for F2P games on the platform, or Xbox One, in the future. World of Tanks 360 Edition is currently in beta. Interested? Sign up here.
Of course, if WoT 360 Ed. doesn’t work out, we can always hope for Total Annihilation or Master of Orion sequels!