Free-to-play first-person shooter Tribes: Ascend is ditching the idea of a console release as expected, although not for any technical hurdles. The game’s business model won’t function on a console, and the small team at Hi-Rez Studios doesn’t have the resources to battle it out with the big two:
“The way it went is that we wanted to do the free-to-play model, and there wasn’t a clear path to that on consoles early on.”
COO Todd Harris put the official stamp into words in a Gamasutra interview. While Harris believes console makers will eventually find a way to implement this type of model, Tribes will almost certainly not be the game to do it.
In a world where Microsoft can’t even honor their free promises (see: Joy Ride), letting a third-party perform the same action does seem unfathomable now.
