Dust 514 will be free-to-play, no 'cover charge'
As CCP winds up to launch Dust 514 later this year, it's given the business model a shake-up. The PlayStation 3-exclusive EVE Online tie-in FPS will be entirely free-to-play, turning away from previous plans for a "cover charge."
As CCP winds up to launch Dust 514 later this year, it's given the business model a shake-up. The PlayStation 3-exclusive EVE Online tie-in FPS will be entirely free-to-play, turning away from previous plans for a "cover charge."
Dust 514 will now be free to download and play when it hits PlayStation Network. CCP had previously planned for players to pay a $10-20 "cover charge" to download it. They would've been granted an equivalent amount of in-game currency to spend on microtransaction doodads, but it would still be a not-insignificant barrier to growing the player base.
The big selling point of Dust is, if you haven't heard, that it hooks into EVE. Internet spaceships players will be able to contract mercenaries planetside in Dust to further their interests. While CCP's talked a fair bit about the integration, it's still not entirely clear how everything will work in practice.
CCP has said that Dust's microtransactions will focus on cosmetic items, skill point boosters and the like, rather than encouraging players to cough up cash to shoot men better. Given the horrible mess that arose when it seemed CCP was even contemplating microtransaction weapons for EVE, it'll hopefully stick to that.
There'll also be a companion app for Vita, CCP explained to Eurogamer. It'll let players shop in the market, equip and customize their gear, chat, and all that jazz.
"As the first true free-to-play FPS on PS3, DUST 514 signifies a big step forward in the evolution of console gaming," Sony Computer Entertainment business development SVP Phil Rosenberg said in today's announcement.
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replyAlice O'Connor posted a new article, Dust 514 will be free-to-play, no 'cover charge'.
As CCP winds up to launch Dust 514 later this year, it's given the business model a shake-up. The PlayStation 3-exclusive EVE Online tie-in FPS will be entirely free-to-play, turning away from previous plans for a "cover charge."-
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Why would they put a F2P game on console who's life expectancy is less than 2-3 years? Especially when the roots of the game that they are creating the new IP from is on an entirely different platform. That is terrible, but given that I have a PS3 I'll have to check it out unfortunately.
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DC Online is now f2p right? Not a FPS but it sort of counts.
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Exactly. I don't see any point in bothering with either console at this point. I highly doubt the development costs and especially the support costs will be worth it and I have to wonder how much this game will be held back by old hardware and limited memory. As you say, if 2013 is the launch year for the next Xbox and PS4 then Dust 514 only has a window of 2-3 years since the PS4 probably won't have backward compatibility. 514's prospects are looking worse as time goes on.
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I'm sure CCP has considered the fact that the next gen consoles are right around the corner, most of you reading this article probably aren't familliar with them but they have their act together for the most part. What Eve is and what Dust will be are unfamilliar territory for most of you, Dust wont be just like the Battlefield or call of Duty series where a game is released, you play it get bored of it then wait for the next title to come out. Dust will be subject to content upgrades long after release, and fights wont just be random matches that you set up in the lobby. You will be accepting contracts from the player corporations in Eve to help them take or defend their territory in the game. Some of these conflicts last for months and can be very memorable for the groups involved. This brings real, tangible incentive to be successful. In Dust 514 your reputation will have more meaning, other games have leader boards and what not but they really dont mean anything in the long run. The wealthiest Eve alliances will want to hire the best mercernary corporations and you can bet there will be elitists in Dust 514 who will only want top notch players in their merc corp to win them that reputable status. If all goes well this game will have some serious staying power, besides its too early to tell if CCP will port it over to the PS4 later, so long as PS3 and 4 share the same network (not sure if they will) there shouldnt be any major obstacles to making that happen, they are already working on linking a console game to a pc mmo in real time after all. Of course thats just my opinion, in the end they might decide the ps3 is enough or who knows what else.
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Rampant speculation or breach of NDA: YOU DECIDE
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whats sad is this game is going to flop hard
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Still bothers the hell out of me that this isn't going to be on PC. Seems like a huge misstep in terms of social interaction, cooperation, and coordination with the existing Eve player base.
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this is remnants of CCP's old "we can do anything! See, we give them shit in a can and our subscription numbers still grow!" motto. I suspect old contractual issues is what is pushing this game forth to some extent. I'm still betting that a pc release will happen 6 months to a year down the road. Xbox will never happen because ms will want it so that only gold subs can get to the game at any time. And that all micro funnel through the ms points system.
For now though, I'm still waiting for news on exactly what the link is between dust and eve. It has been what, 1.5 years since dominion was released? And part of the supposed revamp of sov that happened in that expansion was supposedly groundwork to help facilitate dust players making an impact in territory control in eve. But I've yet to hear what link that is, nor has there been any info on exactly how the game handles things. I'm assuming the game will be as "MMO" as WoT is instead of the MMO that is planetside.
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