PS4 and next Xbox will reportedly embrace free-to-play gaming

According to Epic Games Vice President Mark Rein, Microsoft and Sony’s next-gen consoles, the PlayStation 4 and the next Xbox, will “embrace” free-to-play games that rely on in-app purchases for revenue

“The next-gen consoles are going to be fully embracing the free-to-play and these [in-app purchase]-type business models,” Rein said during a roundtable discussion at the UK Game Horizon conference (via Joystiq). “So in case you don’t know that I’m putting that out there. Sony and Microsoft are both going heavily in that area.”

“I’m telling you what they’re telling developers,” Rein added later.

Microsoft’s next-gen Xbox is still under wraps, set to be revealed May 21. But Sony’s PS4 is no secret, and Sony Worldwide Studios President Shuhei Yoshida recently told Game Informer (reported by Gaming Everything) that Sony will consider any and all revenue models that may work for the next-gen PlayStation system.

“We are developing a free-to-play type of game, but we haven’t announced it yet,” Yoshida said. “We don’t have any subscription-based games in development, but we are not crossing out any type of game; if it makes sense for a particular project, we’ll look at adopting different models. We are open for any types of models. Overall, we are increasing investment in the digital side of development, either through digital titles like Journey that we’ve been doing, but also trying to add more service-based models to our games going forward, like DLCs or additional features post launch.”

Sony also announced at the Game Developers Conference in March that Blacklight: Retribution, a free-to-play PC game, will head to PS4 at some point.

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