World of Tanks Boss Unhappy About Xbox Live Gold Requirement

[Andy Chalk]

World of Tanks Boss Unhappy About Xbox Live Gold Requirement

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Wargaming CEO Victor Kislyi says he has to tolerate the Xbox Live Gold subscription requirement for World of Tanks, but he's not happy about it.

One of Microsoft's biggest announcements at E3 was that World of Tanks, the free-to-play armored combat simulator already enjoyed by millions of PC gamers around the world, is coming [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/124773-World-of-Tanks-Coming-to-Xbox-360-This-Summer] to the Xbox 360. Just kidding! World of Tanks is actually pretty cool but it's hardly a game-changer; it is interesting, however, to watch the clash between the die-hard free-to-play culture embodied by World of Tanks that's already common on the PC, and the "pay for everything" walled garden of Xbox Live.

"With Microsoft, unfortunately it's not 100 percent free-to-play because it requires the Gold subscription to Xbox Live membership. But that's a Microsoft requirement which is valid for us and for Activision and for EA and all other partners. They cannot drop it for us because they would have to drop it for everyone and it would be a total mess for them," Kislyi told GamesIndustry. "This we have to tolerate, which I am not happy about. I would rather add another 30-40 million non-golden members and they will monetize occasionally."

Kislyi was also critical of Microsoft Points, which he described as "suicide in free-to-play," and said Wargaming would "advise [Microsoft] on how to embrace, sometime in the future, different payment methods like SMS" for the Xbox One. But while working with huge console companies can be far more challenging than developing for the PC, he added that it's necessary for his company to do so because of the predominance of consoles in North America and parts of Europe.

"We are an entertainment company and we have to cater to our players whatever they use," he said. "If you want to play World of Tanks on console, we have to make it possible for you."

The PC version of World of Tanks recently broke 60 million registered users worldwide. Applications for the Xbox 360 beta are being taken now at worldoftanks.com/xbox [http://worldoftanks.com/xbox].

Source: GamesIndustry [http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-06-24-world-of-tanks-and-the-free-to-play-console-war]


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[WouldYouKindly]

Fortunately I've got a PC that runs WoT at 60+ FPS now, rather than my old laptop that got maybe 20 and often dropped to single digits.

 

[Bolt-206]

I would kinda like to see Xbox players get something out of this that makes up for the whole Gold Membership Requirement; maybe something like getting small amounts of free gold every week(?).

 

[BrotherRool]

They cannot drop it for us because they would have to drop it for everyone and it would be a total mess for them,"

Luckily Sony doesn't seem to be having the same problems dropping subscription for F2P games at the developers choice


As a side note

Kislyi was also critical of Microsoft Points, which he described as "suicide in free-to-play," and said Wargaming would "advise [Microsoft] on how to embrace, sometime in the future, different payment methods like SMS" for the Xbox One.

Doesn't mean that the developer is unaware of MS dropping the point system from the One (which confused me for a second) the bit inbetween those two quotes was 'thank God - they are moving to real currency. '

 

[fix-the-spade]

I like that, there are more World of Tanks users than there are Xbox Live, weird how things come and go.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

Well why dont the WOT people tell MS to screw off if they dont like the gold thing. I wonder if its because they are getting paid to have the game on the console. He is trying to come across as "im for the player" but he is just greedy because if non-gold people could play WOT, then he would make more money.

An who would play WOT when there are so much more better games to play online.

 

[Dogstile]

Well why dont the WOT people tell MS to screw off if they dont like the gold thing. I wonder if its because they are getting paid to have the game on the console. He is trying to come across as "im for the player" but he is just greedy because if non-gold people could play WOT, then he would make more money.

An who would play WOT when there are so much more better games to play online.

I don't know, the 60 million PC gamers who, despite having "better games to play", gave tanks a go and stuck with it?

 

[Alfador_VII]

Well if Victor isn't happy about the Xbox Live Gold requirement, he should have stayed on PC.

Oh wait he IS happy about getting money

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

Well why dont the WOT people tell MS to screw off if they dont like the gold thing. I wonder if its because they are getting paid to have the game on the console. He is trying to come across as "im for the player" but he is just greedy because if non-gold people could play WOT, then he would make more money.

An who would play WOT when there are so much more better games to play online.

I don't know, the 60 million PC gamers who, despite having "better games to play", gave tanks a go and stuck with it?

If its free to play, then why not? Just means that they have gave it a go and not bothered to cancel it yet. 60 million people registered, doesnt mean all 60 million are constant players.

 

[Trishbot]

He put up with it because Microsoft paid him with a house of money.

If he doesn't like it, and it bothers him to a large enough degree, then stick to PC or, hell, PS4 OPENLY supports free-to-play games (it's launching with 4 of them right out of the gate). I mean, if he doesn't like the policy, and their competition doesn't HAVE the paywall in place, then why stick with them?

... apart from the money, of course.

 

[Irridium]

I wonder if he knows that Sony doesn't require PS+ to be needed for free-to-play games on the PS4.

 

[SecondPrize]

I don't disagree with him but perhaps he should get together with Phil Fish and attend an adult education course on how to read a contract. If you've a problem with something like this, now is a little late to be bringing it up.

 

[Dogstile]

Well why dont the WOT people tell MS to screw off if they dont like the gold thing. I wonder if its because they are getting paid to have the game on the console. He is trying to come across as "im for the player" but he is just greedy because if non-gold people could play WOT, then he would make more money.

An who would play WOT when there are so much more better games to play online.

I don't know, the 60 million PC gamers who, despite having "better games to play", gave tanks a go and stuck with it?

If its free to play, then why not? Just means that they have gave it a go and not bothered to cancel it yet. 60 million people registered, doesnt mean all 60 million are constant players.

50% is still 30 million. They only need a fraction of the playerbase they bring in to pay money to make a huge profit and to make their game better (which they have been doing, its actually quite odd).

And hell, its not as if they're hurting for money.

Spoiler: Yeah, he actually hired two of these girls purely because he had a fun time talking to them. He pays them extremely well. He doesn't have to care because people like his game and actually pay a lot of money into it

Or, if you want something you can't scoff and go "so he's a womanizer" at, wargaming also game money to restore a plane that crashed in WW2.

Spoiler: Link inside

http://www.heritagedaily.com/2013/05/wargaming-to-sponsor-new-education-centre-donate-to-dornier-17-restoration/

Say what you want about the tanks team, they're making a massive amount of money, they host massive events at every gameshow they go to. The free to win system works. Besides, the game is fun.

 

[Something Amyss]

I would kinda like to see Xbox players get something out of this that makes up for the whole Gold Membership Requirement; maybe something like getting small amounts of free gold every week(?).

Unfortunately, that will never happen.

That would effectively be Microsoft giving people something of tangible value for their service.

 

[Something Amyss]

I don't disagree with him but perhaps he should get together with Phil Fish and attend an adult education course on how to read a contract. If you've a problem with something like this, now is a little late to be bringing it up.

I don't think he's acting like he was screwed like Fish. I think he's mostly just saying " this is a necessary evil of bringing it to this service." And he can hate Microsoft points or think they're bad for business and still want to bring his game to the platform.

 

[KeyMaster45]

Well why dont the WOT people tell MS to screw off if they dont like the gold thing. I wonder if its because they are getting paid to have the game on the console. He is trying to come across as "im for the player" but he is just greedy because if non-gold people could play WOT, then he would make more money.

An who would play WOT when there are so much more better games to play online.

I don't know, the 60 million PC gamers who, despite having "better games to play", gave tanks a go and stuck with it?

It's a trick of marketing, pay attention to how that was worded "60 million registered users," registered, not active. While their business seems to be a successful one I highly doubt their active user count is 60 million. The more important figure to suss out would be the statistics for how many unique accounts log in on a daily or monthly basis.

Blizzard, I'm certain, has millions more Warcraft accounts sitting around inactive than they do active; that's why they report smaller numbers like 12 million (at its peak) or 9 million (where I think it's sitting today). Blizzard can track that though since they use a subscription model where as F2P games, like WoT, can't so they give the massively over inflated number of all time account registered to give the illusion that everyone and their grandma is playing their game. Of course even blizzard doesn't have it's 9 million subscribers playing at once so their daily user numbers are probably a smaller number than what they print on the ads.

Of course this is assuming companies are telling anything remotely close to the truth when they spout these numbers; as far as I know the only thing we have to go on is that they super pinky swear they're not lying.

There's really no point I'm trying to make. I just find the proclamation of high subscription numbers to be a funny quirk of the MMO industry. (maybe that they're all lying bastards about it, but meh)

 

[Dogstile]

Well why dont the WOT people tell MS to screw off if they dont like the gold thing. I wonder if its because they are getting paid to have the game on the console. He is trying to come across as "im for the player" but he is just greedy because if non-gold people could play WOT, then he would make more money.

An who would play WOT when there are so much more better games to play online.

I don't know, the 60 million PC gamers who, despite having "better games to play", gave tanks a go and stuck with it?

It's a trick of marketing, pay attention to how that was worded "60 million registered users," registered, not active. While their business seems to be a successful one I highly doubt their active user count is 60 million. The more important figure to suss out would be the statistics for how many unique accounts log in on a daily or monthly basis.

Blizzard, I'm certain, has millions more Warcraft accounts sitting around inactive than they do active; that's why they report smaller numbers like 12 million (at its peak) or 9 million (where I think it's sitting today). Blizzard can track that though since they use a subscription model where as F2P games, like WoT, can't so they give the massively over inflated number of all time account registered to give the illusion that everyone and their grandma is playing their game. Of course even blizzard doesn't have it's 9 million subscribers playing at once so their daily user numbers are probably a smaller number than what they print on the ads.

Of course this is assuming companies are telling anything remotely close to the truth when they spout these numbers; as far as I know the only thing we have to go on is that they super pinky swear they're not lying.

There's really no point I'm trying to make. I just find the proclamation of high subscription numbers to be a funny quirk of the MMO industry. (maybe that they're all lying bastards about it, but meh)

I made a post below yours saying that they didn't need to keep all of them. Just having 60 million people try out a game is a damn good accomplishment though. Also the post below yours has the number of people who actively play.

 

[AgedGrunt]

As a Forza fan, getting half a game without donating blood money for Gold, he has my sincere sympathies. One more reason to consider a PS4, maybe even go back to Gran Turismo.