Honestly it was the weirdest thing at PAX.

One of the public’s earliest chances to see and play the PS4 and they chose to show these. Along with Killzone: Shadow Fall, Knack, DriveClub, and a bunch of smaller indie games, Sony was proudly displaying games that would have the fremium model. Namely Blacklight: Retribution and WarFrame.

Both of these game have been on PC for a while now.

And this was front line and center next to the biggest games(and DiveKick). And it didn’t stop there. Wargaming was all out on World of Tanks on Xbox 360, a port of their free-to-play PC game now being ported to the 360 and just a stones throw away was Killer Instinct. Killer Instinct is a revival of an old fighting game franchise from the SNES era now exclusive to Xbox One. Once more, while a “retail” version can be bought with, you know, the game like you would expect, you can also have it free-to-play. You get one character Jago, sort of the Ryu of Killer Instinct, and the rest of the characters can be bought ala carte just like your favorite MOBA.

Does no one else think this is a little weird? Granted, these kinds of games have been on PC’s for awhile now, but I thought the common industry line regarding the PC was that it’s a “different user base looking for a different experience.” Personally that’s kind of where I am with this. When you are making a PS4, Xbox One, or Wii U game you know you are making a game for people who are willing to spend money on a video game. At the same time you are dealing with an audience with historically a low attach rate for paying for download only content. Looking at what became of the PSP Go or even the recent backpedaling from Microsoft regarding the always online business it seems like console players are still a little shy of going pure digital. Meanwhile on the PC people have been buying games digital only for awhile now. It’s something the user base is already okay with because it makes sense on that platform. The only source of income from the fremium model is purchasing content on an online store, a method of payment that this player base is not yet 100% on-board for.

I am curious to see how this all turns out. I want to look at World of Tanks 360 when it comes out. I wonder how the payment models will work there and what kind of player base it will get. It’s weird territory we are diving into and even if it doesn’t quite work out, I still think video games are fun.