Many sources of the internet are saying that free to play is the way forward and that console would soon no longer be king, as they simply wouldn’t be able to compete in this market.

Well Sony certainly don’t appear to be under this impression in a recent interview with Games Industry ”Free-to-play on PlayStation 3 is huge,” he said. “In fact, right now, it’s us with DCUO and Free Realms and our friends at CCP with Dust 514 that are going to prove that this market really works.”

According to Smedley there was some difficulty convincing the hardware manufacturer to take a bet on console free-to-play, but eventually that was ended after seeing the numbers with DC Universe.

“I admit there was a mindset where when you use the word ‘free’ people pause. ‘Wait a minute, what do you mean by free?’ But even then people want to see the results. With DC Universe Online the split that we’re seeing ended the debate right there.”

“Free-to-play is the ultimate expression of a free market in video gaming,” continued Smedley.

“It’s completely about quality, there’s no purer way to see whether you have a good game or not than by saying ‘this is free, do you want to play it?’ I would argue that free-to-play is much more pure than regular games because with those marketing can determine who picks up the game.”

The consoles are striving to remain king and move and develop with what people want and they that means free to play, I am still not convinced whether I would prefer paying out one lump sum for a game or checking my bank account every day to make sure I haven’t gone overdrawn with all the microtransactions I’ve made.