Gaming giant Electronic Arts has just announced that they are working to release a free online version of Battlefield Heroes for the PC, and the reason why it will come at no financial cost to the customer is because the entire game will be supported by adverts as well as micro payments. It won’t be readily available across store shelves as it will only be made downloadable later this year, so brick and mortar stores will lose out on a few pennies or so. What does this mean for the gamer? Will our hardcore gaming sessions in the future be interrupted with special messages by “sponsors” during the most crucial moment of a game if such an idea takes off? I don’t really like the idea of this, but only time will tell whether it is brilliant or will it bomb.

Battlefield Heroes will mark EA’s first major attempt to enter the ad-driven revenue model in Western markets, not too long after releasing a free version of its Fifa game in South Korea that actually picked up over a cool million dollars within a month via in-game sales. Advertisements will appear on the website as well as the ‘front-end’ segment of the game, allowing gamers to customize their characters by buying items that change their appearance. Funny, what used to be free (although we do purchase the game from the store) must now be purchased in-game.

Ben Cousins, senior producer at Battlefield Heroes developer Dice, says that the original game is complex, full of skilled people and needs a high-end PC, but beginners and noobs can pick up the free version which has been given EA’s guarantee that it will be way more accessible. Casual gaming looks like a path well forged by the Wii, and EA is definitely moving in Nintendo’s wake by releasing a game where even grandma’s laptop can run it.

Source: PC World

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