David Perry posits 70 Million player massive game
David Perry, a gent who used to be synonymous with the quirky developer Shiny Entertainment, is now best known for his work in the Massive games industry. He recently did an interview with the website videogame247, where he essentially said that World of Warcraft is still too niche for the potential MMOs represent. In fact, he could see a game someday existing that nets '70 million players'. As he puts it, "we haven't got anyone that's thinking down the Will Wright path."
Perry is looking to outfits like Club Penguin or MapleStory as harbingers of the future. He posits that if World of Warcraft were to go free-to-play, it would be looking at a 25 million-strong playerbase instead of 'only' 10 million. He himself is very familiar with the free-to-play model, as several of the Acclaim online titles he's imported to the country of late are based on that paradigm. How successful do you think a free-to-play WoW would be? Will we ever get to a 70 million player game, or is that 'the crazy talk'?
[Via RPS]
