Electronic Arts sees lots of room for growth in the PC market, which may become the publisher's biggest revenue generator, according to EA Games label president Frank Gibeau.
"The user base is gigantic," he told Gamasutra. "PC retail may be a big problem, but PC downloads are awesome. ... The margins are much better and we don't have any rules in terms of first party approvals.
"From our perspective, it's an extremely healthy platform. ... It's totally conceivable it will become our biggest platform," he added. "If you look at the way people play in Asia, PC is the model. I think that free to play model is coming to the west in a big way."
EA said last week that an open beta of Battlefield Play4Free is coming to PC in April, and that it thinks the title is comparable in quality to the industry's leading FPS games.
The global PC games market showed "surprisingly strong growth in 2010", bringing in record annual revenue of
Gibeau also told Gamasutra that EA's starting to think about the next generation of consoles, even though he thinks there's still plenty more to get out of PS3 and Xbox 360.
"What's interesting is the displays are maxed out already," he said. "Once you get to 1080p, it's not about increasing resolution.
"Obviously, more computing horsepower is nice, but to be honest, the Xbox 360 and PS3 still have a lot of horsepower that hasn't been tapped. I really think the next innovation is in the input device, but even more importantly, what will the online experience be like?"
"The user base is gigantic," he told Gamasutra. "PC retail may be a big problem, but PC downloads are awesome. ... The margins are much better and we don't have any rules in terms of first party approvals.
"From our perspective, it's an extremely healthy platform. ... It's totally conceivable it will become our biggest platform," he added. "If you look at the way people play in Asia, PC is the model. I think that free to play model is coming to the west in a big way."
EA said last week that an open beta of Battlefield Play4Free is coming to PC in April, and that it thinks the title is comparable in quality to the industry's leading FPS games.
The global PC games market showed "surprisingly strong growth in 2010", bringing in record annual revenue of
£10 billion, according to the PC Gaming Alliance.
Gibeau also told Gamasutra that EA's starting to think about the next generation of consoles, even though he thinks there's still plenty more to get out of PS3 and Xbox 360.
"What's interesting is the displays are maxed out already," he said. "Once you get to 1080p, it's not about increasing resolution.
"Obviously, more computing horsepower is nice, but to be honest, the Xbox 360 and PS3 still have a lot of horsepower that hasn't been tapped. I really think the next innovation is in the input device, but even more importantly, what will the online experience be like?"
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