So this is a thing. From the article on Shoryuken:

During a recent interview with Famitsu, Team Ninja head Yosuke Hayashi revealed that Tecmo Koei is planning to offer a free-to-play version of their upcoming Ultimate expansion to Dead or Alive 5. Kasumi, Ayane, Hayate, and Hayabusa will be completely free of charge from the get-go, along with online play. All single-player modes (besides the story) and non-DLC outfits and stages will also be included, and free users will be able to play online with those who purchased the full game.

Additional characters will be priced at ¥400 (~$3.98 USD) and the story mode will be available to purchase for ¥1500 (~$14.93 USD). It was also announced that save files and downloadable content from vanilla Dead or Alive 5 will carry over to Ultimate. At this point in time, only a Japanese release for this free-to-play version has been announced, but we’ll be sure to let you know when news regarding other regions becomes available.

For now, feel free to let us know what you think of this offer. There has been a bit of discussion recently regarding fighting games possibly making the transition to free-to-play, and this is one of the first instances we’ve seen of an established company going that route with a well-known title. If this should reach your country, will you be interested in trying it out?

Source: Famitsu via NeoGAF

So I'm kind of torn about this on one hand this model seems kind of cool because you could potentially ignore characters you don't give a fuck about. On the other hand if you wanted everything you'll be paying an upwards of $110 that isn't counting the costume DLC of which there is PLENTY in DOA5. Still, interesting to see this F2P model invading other spaces in the game world besides MMO's and MOBA's

What I find interesting about this is the separate purchase of different modes. It's like I'm one step closer to being able to buy a game cheaper without the multiplayer, except they went the wrong way.

I think fighting games are great for a F2P model. You just buy the stuff you actually want to use. Car or racing games could be another great F2P model. Like the GT5 rumor we had a while a go with a very cheap basic model for like 20$ and then you can buy cars you actually want to use.

Free to play DOA5 pricing seems geared toward those that are absolutely sure that they don't have interest in the full package.

Surprised they made some of the most popular characters free.

Is Jann lee gonna be free? If so i'm good.

That sounds pretty interesting. I guess everyone is going to get really good at the Kasumi, Ayane, Hayate, and Hayabusa matchups :\

But if the free version includes local and online versus and training mode, that's all I'd ever need. If I got all that for free, I can definitely see myself buying a few extra characters. Let's hope this does see a release outside of Japan, if not just because it will set an interesting precedent.

IAP TITS

update from neogaf

-Ein is based on DOA2 but have new moves. Users from DOA2 will not have any problem using him from the beginning.

-Jacky and Momiji are both made to be easy to use.

-with free version, you will be able to fight against all the characters

-they are planning promotions where they will have a certain character unlock for free for few days for people to try out. If they like that character, they can go buy that character.

-the full package user will not be able to tell if you are playing from free version.

-there is no limitations for free version like "you can play XX number of games per day." sort of thing.

-the free version is for PS3 only at this moment. They are working hard to get it on Xbox360 as well, but they cannot promise it will come.

sounds pretty good

@sooty said:

I know mentioning tits in a thread about DOA is sort of the funny thing to do, but honestly DO5 was barely worse than the average game in this department.

@immortalsaiyan: Basically the Ninja's are free. Hayabusa, Hayate, Ayane, Kasumi. Although this pricing model hasn't been confirmed for any other territories yet outside of japan and if you're getting it on 360 like you did last time it might not even be an option because... hey microsoft.

Although sounds like a full retail release is still happening.

It's a bit of a strange offer, since moreso than other genres fighting games seem to fall in price and end up in bargain bins really quickly (in my experience). If you bought the story mode and a few characters, you'd easily be paying what you'd pay for for the whole game in a few months after release.

At this point, "free" is the only price I would pay for another DoA game. Unless the radically change the core to do something else I do not believe that charging $60 for the game is going to work out well.

I think that DOA2 was the last one I played, but Ayane and Hayate were my team, so the character choice seems designed to get me to give it a go...

The free-to-play craze is going to be the dark age of videogames

I feel like this would only work out well for the consumer if the base price and additional purchase costs are scaled so that you'll end up with roughly a "full" game's worth of content for about "full" price. Otherwise, you end up with something like the iOS (and Android?) version of Theatrhythm Final Fantasy that cost like $140 to get everything included in the $40 3DS version. And that's some hot bullshit, right there.

*edit: Evidently, I was off on my figures for Theatrhythm, but not by enough to change the point I was making. The base 3DS game was $30, and came with all the characters and 76 songs. If you bought all the eShop songs at 99 cents apiece, your total would be around $82 for 128 songs and all the characters. The iOS version is free, with 2 songs included, but additional characters and songs bring the total cost up to $143.

Would it be better if they continued to fool themselves into believing they can be viable selling this at $60? That seems like a dark future for them as well.

Yes they do. F2P is another option and will not replace the full retail version and I hope we will see more of this model next gen. A "Premium 60$ version and a f2P version.

If you already know that you will buy everything you can buy the 60$ version inn the first place. If you are actually stupid enough to pay more in the end than the 60$ it is your own fault for not buying the 60$ Version.

The concern isn't that people are going to be dumb and not buy the full version up front, it's that at some point there may not BE a full version to buy. So if you wanted to play everything, your only choice would be to get each element piece by piece.

Sounds like a very cool idea, but I'd rather just pay my $60 up front and get the entire game. I only play like maybe 3-4 characters out of the entire cast, but I like having the ability to choose whoever of whatever mode I want if the mood strikes.

Still, I like this move. It may not be aimed towards me, but I like it.

That will not happening. Don't worry about that.

The problem with free-to-play is that it actually incentivizes the publisher to spend less money on production and maximize profits on microtransactions, which in turn lends itself to incomplete, poorly designed games.

There can be good free to play models, sure, but the format is too easily exploitable to trust big companies to not abuse it.

I'd rather pay $60 and get a feature complete game (or at the very least, a game that will not try and squeeze money off me every other screen).

I realize that these may be edge-cases, but what about things like Marvel Heroes, Final Fantasy: All The Bravest, the Train Simulator games, and (to a certain extent) League of Legends?

These are purely F2P games except for train simulator but this game is insane. We are talking here about "normal" games which could be in the future offering a Premium Version for 60$ and a F2P model like DOA5 does.

It is an interesting idea but its like Tetris, if you allow a demo of Tetris nobody would buy the full game. Players would learn the free characters and will probably not buy any other characters. Even though the story was crazy, the real interest would be in the online play and again nobody would buy it.

I don't know about that.

The designers would have to have full confidence in their designs, but I would TOTALLY buy new characters/levels/modes/costumes for my favorite fighting games. They just have to be cool enough. In fact, I think I would be more likely to purchase those than any other type of game content. I CERTAINLY would be more likely to buy a new level of character than I would something in WOW or Diablo or something like that...

Yeah Also I think it is a great idea that they offer some free day or maybe weekends to try new characters and if you want to keep them you can buy them. This is F2P done right.

@darji: That note about the new comers being easy to use is a slippery slope. DOA is a rather accessible game as it is, if they make the character really strong and easy to use they may flood the metagame.

Yeah, I think they COULD sell it for $60 although I think a much more market viable price for this would be $40. Judging by your earlier post DOA games have little to no value to you anyways. To the fan base this update is easily worth it especially considering saves and DLC is cross compatible. I think the Free 2 Play model is aimed more at people like yourself who want little to no monetary investment wrapped up in a DOA game but might casually want to play a little bit if given a free pass.

I do agree with that. To me, fighting games no longer feel like they have enough content to justify $60 + DLC price tags. I'm definitely amenable to $20 or even $40 for the basic game with "core characters" and a basic campaign. That also justifies the "value add" of any "collector super edition" with all characters + future DLC versions.

Has anyone here actually bought all of the additional costumes?

AKA the fuck Brad Wong and Jann Lee package.

@damswedon: WAHH-TAHHHH!

So it's FREE to play, but is it free to PLAY? That's the important question.

This is actually really cool since my friends will never actually buy a fighting game but just maybe I can convince them to download the free version and play some games with me.

I'll be buying the full version, even though I could probably save money by just buying just what I want (don't care much for the story mode and I'm only interested in a few characters, though none of which come in the free version)

All of this, is of course assuming there will be an English release of the f2p version.