SMITE Xbox One Producer Says “Microsoft are embracing F2P”

Smite Xbox One Producer Andy Anderson has recently conducted an interview with Gamespot regarding the release of Smite, free-to-play multiplayer online battle arena game aka MOBA, on the Xbox One. To those of you who knows what makes this one special in the sea of MOBAs that is available already, Smite lets you play with gods from ancient mythologies including Greek, Egyptian, Chinese, Roman, and more from a third person perspective instead of the traditional top-down.

 

This will be the first free-to-play title to land on the console and Andy Anderson saw in Microsoft’s initiative to bring free-to-play games on its console as proof that “they’re learning the best way to navigate the market.”

 

“I think as the first MOBA on next-generation consoles, we feel like we will translate to that very well. I think that we’re introducing the MOBA genre to a whole new group of players.” Andy states. “With free-to-play, I think you’ll see that publishers like Microsoft are embracing it, and they’re learning the best way to navigate the market. We’re partnering very well with that and we’re working with each other. They’ve been very flexible.. their processes are more geared around discs and paying for a game, and now they’re adjusting some of those processes to better support a free-to-play game where you get more frequent updates of content and things like that. Basically, I think it’s going to take off.”

 

Andy also sees that F2P games are “going to take off.” on consoles in general with a number of them already released on the PS4, most recent was Planetside 2 that launched on June 23rd.

 

“I think you’re starting to see [the free-to-play] shift on consoles; there are a couple of decent titles that have come out recently and done pretty well on the free-to-play market. I think we’ll be next in line to help keep pushing that forward. Some of that comes from quality. I think, at least in my mind, the free-to-play games from years ago were kind of associated with smaller shot, not very deep games.”Andy replied “Now, you’ve got games like Warframe or Smite that are coming on board and have a large following from PC and bring a really high-quality game, even though it’s free. People will see the graphics and get excited about it. I think that will help shift the flow as you see more free-to-play games migrate to the console.”

 

Smite will release on Xbox One later this year but it will go into open beta on July 8 while the PC version launched last year.