EA’s experiment in the free-to-play model, Battlefield Heroes, seems to be doing alright for itself, with statistics for purchasing habits showing that when people buy, they buy quite a bit.
Battlefield Heroes is a “a live experiment in the gaming industry,” Electronic Arts says, and like any good scientific experiment, it must yield data. And so far, the numbers for Battlefield Heroes aren’t looking too shabby. Not everyone playing the free-to-play, microtransactions-based game is spending real money, but the people who are buying things are doing it quite a bit.
EA figures that of the people who do actually spend money in the game’s store, the average amount spent is $20. That money goes toward Battlefunds, which are used to purchase neat goodies like clothes, XP boosts and items. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the most popular items in the game are those that don’t affect gameplay: 76 percent of Battlefunds are spent on vanity items like coats, caps, sunglasses, pants and more.
XP and valor boosts are also popular, with emote actions rounding out the last five percent of sales. Because people do so love to laugh and dance over the dead bodies of their opponents.
EA reported that 1.5 million players have logged into the game, though considering we can’t tell exactly how many of them have spent money in the store, it’s hard to gauge exactly how much money the game has made. People aren’t just dawdling in there and not spending anything though, that’s for sure.
[Via IGN]
Published: Aug 13, 2009 10:21 pm