The action MMO Neverwinter was released as a free-to-play title on the Xbox One and has been quite successful.
As John Smedley from the competition knows, the free-to-play segment on consoles is still relatively untapped and very lucrative: If you have a console, the first thing you do is look for what’s available for free, this is his theory.
And if you search on the Xbox One right now, you will find “Neverwinter.” 1.6 million players have found it, as Cryptic now reports. So many players have played the game since March 31, 2015, on the console. This places it in the “top segment” of free-to-play titles on the Xbox One.
To ensure this remains the case, they promise plenty of new content and quickly. 5 free expansions are set to come to the Xbox One in 2015: including Tyranny of Dragons and Elemental Evil, which was recently released on PC to somewhat lukewarm reviews. With this free offensive, they seem to want to significantly reduce the lead that the PC version currently has, maybe even manage to catch up completely. However, they are not currently revealing whether “Underdark”, the next PC module will also be part of the 5 expansions.
The strategy seems to be to deliver the two “missing modules” now, then perhaps bring “Underdark” with some delay and the two “new” modules simultaneously with the PC during the year, which would mean significantly increased content frequency. Perhaps they also plan smaller expansions in between.
A nice infographic is provided as well. Players have:
• Created 2.3 million characters, 92,000 of whom have reached the maximum level of 60
• Spent 86 million minutes playing Neverwinter
• Earned 16 billion Astral Diamonds
• Created 10 million groups
• Defeated over 1 billion monsters, including undead, orcs, and bandits
• 92 players have defeated over 1,000 dragons
Mein MMO states: 1.6 million is a proud number, but it must be mentioned, that this number is inflated for F2P titles and cannot be compared to the 7.1 million subscribers of WoW.
For comparison: A title like Hearthstone has 30 million players, while World of Tanks approaches the 100-million mark when all variants and systems are counted together. The announcement that 92,000 have reached the maximum level may be the more important figure.
We will see how Neverwinter performs when more titles are released in the free-to-play segment of the Xbox One. Soon, Neverwinter will face competition from The Elder Scrolls Online, even though TESO is adopting a buy-to-play model.
Regarding the publisher of Neverwinter, Perfect World, and their relationship with the developer Cryptic Studios there have been quite turbulent reports recently. A success on the console and therefore stepping into a new market would certainly be desirable.
