How World of Tanks will teach Microsoft

One of the surprise announcements at E3 was that World of Tanks, the free-to-play PC juggernaut, will be coming to Micrsoft’s consoles. Xbox has struggled with the free-to-play concept, so how would Wargaming’s tank warfare MMO work with Microsoft’s notoriously difficult console game pricing and certification schemes?

Wargaming’s CEO Victor Kislyi spoke to GamesIndustry International about how they plan to “educate” the stodgy console industry.

“Everybody knows Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo are traditional console companies which are huge in their own merit. They have lots of divisions, lots of departments, lots of regulations. We respect that, and whining and complaining about that structure does not help,” says Kislyi. “We’re now working hard with Microsoft’s people as a team to build this and to break a couple of rules inside Microsoft.”

“We as a company are definitely insisting on breaking all the rules. That’s the definition of free-to-play. Free-to-play has to be transparent, right? And Microsoft traditionally, as a retail boxed business model, has a lot of restrictions – technological, legal, and whatnot. For them and for us this is a big move forward and it’s quite risky,” offers Kislyi.

Kislyi said that he realizes that some compromises will need to be made on Wargaming’s side to bring the game to a console audience. He insists however that console companies need to adapt to the new realities of the F2P model or find themselves in “hard times.”