I'd keep Battlefield Heroes running at no profit, says DICE producer

Speaking to videogaming247, free-to-play PC shooter Battlefield Heroes' executive producer Ben Cousins has said that the game may be run even if it doesn't make profit, primarily as it succeeds in bringing new players into the world of Battlefield in general.

"That would be down to someone more senior that me," he said when asked on what criteria the game would be closed down, "but my personal [opinion] would be that if we're at least breaking even I'd like to keep the game running, just because it's quite a good way of recruiting younger players into the Battlefield franchise and to teach them how to play for free, and as a marketing tool, frankly."

Cousens added that running into a loss would obviously jeopardise the project, but that prospects for the game so far were rosy.

"Obviously there comes a point where if you're losing money you can't keep it going, but the response we've had has been so big," he said.

"If you look at the Google trends graphs, we're trending above a lot of the more high profile retail products in terms of people searching for us, so we know we're going to get a volume of players and I guess we just have to be confident that some of those are going to convert into paying customers."

Battlefield Heroes will be funded by a system of micropayments and advertising. There's no released date as yet, but the game's going into beta now, so don't expect to wait that long.