Sony Experimenting With Unannounced 'Freemium' Concepts Internally

The coining pertains to the idea of "free" and "premium" gameplay models — where players can enjoy a base experience at no cost, but can choose to enhance their experience by spending money.

Arguably the best example of freemium when looking at Sony's video game strategy is PlayStation Home — the free to access virtual world experience that allows players to level-up their investment by purchasing costumes, items and companions. But while PlayStation Home fits beautifully under the freemium headline, it's not exactly a game. Indeed, Sony's actual video game endeavours couldn't be further away from the model taking the industry by storm.

But according to Sony XDEV Europe's John Ronston, it's something the platform holder is looking to change.

“At Sony we haven’t really experimented with freemium play and micro-transactions as some of the mobile development teams have, for obvious reasons. So there’s a couple of unannounced internal concepts that we’ve got where we’re looking at that whole area," he told GamesIndustry.biz.

Unsurprisingly it's from the mobile space that Sony is receiving the majority of its pitches.

“Coming from console development that was a real eye-opener," he continued. "The most successful companies in the mobile space define the game once it’s launched. They analyse everything in infinite detail with a team of analysts on the game to figure out how it can work. They just don’t build things like we do in the console space. I think there will be a trend where we try and understand a lot more of how that market works with our products.”

Ronston furthered that he believes the release of the PS Vita will expand the PlayStation Network, upping its user count and increasing the system's functionality to something more in line with other social networks.

But while Ronston believes there's big growth in the mobile and freemium sectors right now, he doesn't anticipate Sony neglecting core gamers in the near future.

“Look at Uncharted 3,” he said. “I don’t ever want that experience to go away, we want to that to grow. The Quantic Dream experiences, the Naughty Dog experiences, we want them to continue.”

More Quantic Dream? Yes please.