Thu, May 10, 2012 | 04:49 BST

Analyst expects The Elder Scrolls Online to be subscription based

Despite a growing acceptance of freemium-first business models, the informed money is on a premium subscription model for The Elder Scrolls Online.

Speaking to EDGE, Gamesbrief founder Nicholas Lovell said he expects Zenimax Online to start off with subscriptions and switch at a later date; an increasingly common pattern for big-budget MMORPGs.

“I still believe that subscription games are on the way out. It is conceivable that Bethesda will launch with a subscription service to attract the early adopters, because that is the model they understand,” he said.

“They will switch to free-to-play later, in the same way that many iOS games go from paid to freemium over their lifetime. EA is struggling with The Old Republic, [but] almost everyone else is transitioning to free-to-play.”

As EDGE notes, development on The Elder Scrolls Online kicked off in 2007, when subscription-based models were much more common.

After years of rumours, the MMORPG was finally revealed last week, and has spawned an announcement trailer and major coverage in GameInformer. It’s due on Mac and PC in 2013.

5 comments

TheWulf
10/05/12, 5:33 am

Thaaat would be a mistake. But I have my suspicions that they may go with the buy-to-play model instead.

TD_Monstrous69
10/05/12, 6:31 am

It’s just a day of obvious statements from industry analysts, isn’t it?

mongbatstar
10/05/12, 9:04 am

Let’s play at being analysts!

I expect this game to support more than one player.

endgame
10/05/12, 9:29 am

@1 “Thaaat would be a mistake.” I seriously doubt it. If a game as bad as SWToR is successful than so will a new Skyrim.

TheWulf
10/05/12, 8:12 pm

Yes, but SWTOR is in a head-first kamikaze decline at the moment. They’re publishing numbers every few seconds and shouting “EVERYTHING IS FINE!” whilst wiping the sweat off their brow. They haven’t been making very confident sounds about it, really.

The subscription model is turning TOR into another WAR. WAR lasted as long as TOR has, had the same amount of hype, and went out the same way. If TOR does fail, then yes, it would be a mistake.