Real Racing 3 releases worldwide Feb 28 for free on iOS, Android, and Amazon Appstore

[Firemonkeys Sam]

Just posting a new thread on this as I'm sure many people will be asking about it. We've announced the game will be released worldwide on Feb 28 on mobile and tablet devices for free.

Here's my comment on the game being free:

Today we announced Real Racing 3 will be free. And yes, Real Racing 3 was designed from the ground up to be a free to play experience. We are so excited about this game and wanted it to be accessible to everyone so we didn't want there to be any barriers to entry. This accessibility is also what drives the awesome new Time Shifted Multiplayer feature, in that you can play competitive multiplayer with anyone any time, and they don't need to be online with you at the same time.
At launch we have 46 licensed vehicles covering 3 classes, a 22 car grid, real world tracks, 8 varied event types and 900+ events. This means hundreds of hours of gameplay for free making this one of the most expansive games ever on mobile. We plan to continue to add more free and exciting content with every update.

[~Massa~]

Are you kidding me ? for free? big mistake imho

I am sure many people would have bought it anyway but I am curious if there will be in-app stuff?

And many many noobs probably on the track then

I was ready to pay a good amount of money for this product..

Maybe you can explain this decision a bit more detailed.

[tiptoptone]

It will be interesting to see how much the game pushes players towards payments.

I have never previously enjoyed free games that slow down your in game development, usually based on making you do the same task over and over till you earn enough in game money, or alternatively pay using IAP.

The problem I have with IAP, is that you don't know how long you'll have to keep paying to get past the hurdles of having enough in game money, so as to get to the end of the game.

But if the game works in a way that you are charged an amount to unlock a specific set of events, that I wouldn't mind.

I have only had a couple of freemium games in the past, and each time I just gave up on them due to the expense of continuing to progress through the game. I really do hope this won't be the case for RR3.

[ROY4L_FLU5H]

~Massa~, I completely agree with you. Going freemium was a big mistake. All of Firemonkeys' true fans would have bought the game anyway, regardless of the price. Now that the game is going to be free, we'll probably have buy certain cars and tracks with real money which sucks!

Unless it isn't freemium and Firemonkeys and EA are just releasing it for free on the first day, then it will go back upto to it's original price. <----- Kinda stupid so I doubt it.

[SuperKux]

maybe cause of the ingame purchases? you wana the mclaren? pay! who knows. we will see.

[Jensen Zipper]

Thank you for delaying the worldwide launch until my b'day. I can see the reason you delayed now. Makes perfect sense I was willing to pay $10 so what is the catch? I do hope that will not burden your die hard fans with in-app purchases. Don't make me stay on RR2. Please enlighten us all. Thanks!

[ROY4L_FLU5H]

Just saw a post on TouchArcade; Games such as Minecraft PE at $6.99 are constantly in the top ten. The Pocket Edition of Minecraft severely lacks in content compared to the PC version and yet people still buy it. This shows that true fans will buy the game no matter what the price even if it's not the full game in this case.

Real Racing 3 will be a console quality product and I can't wait for the 28th. How would Firemonkeys make money though by releasing it for free??? Stupid in app purchases.

Please reconsider what your fans want EA and Firemonkeys. Your fans want the best mobile racing game ever, not to find a car that they desperately want and they can't buy it because it needs real money to purchase.

[llui7]

Ummm i think isn't possible for free , there are thousands of hours in Many kinds of works, it's only a demo ??

[The Farmer]

Like it or not, the freemium business model for gaming is here to stay. It can be good or bad depending on how it is implemented. I'll reserve judgement until I'm able to get in the seat and drive it a while. Now I know it is free, so I can go buy lunch with the money I saved up for later this month.

Let's face it... most of us spent from US$4.99 to $14.99 for RR2 and have played it for a year or two.... sometimes thousands of hours. FM has to maintain the servers and software updates for us with no additional income. That is not a sustainable model because the new players (the ones we complain about) are supporting the old players. The business focus is on getting new people to buy a copy and the current user base is a liability (other than social advertising, which is extremely valuable).

With a good implementation of the freemium model, they broaden the user base. And their business focus is on making the game good enough that players will spend real money to get even more of what they see. They can continue to develop new cars and tracks (fresh content) knowing they can get paid for their work. And when more people pay to join OMP, they have the income to upgrade and maintain their servers. (might be nice if free players cannot join OMP with free cars).

With a bad implementation of the freemium model, it will drive the user base away because we will need to pay to fill up our gas tank every 10 races or fix our car after some idiot rams into you when it is no fault of your own.

Let's wait before jumping to conclusions. Sounds like it won't cost us anything to give RR3 a try. They are betting a lot of money that we like it.

[The Farmer]

Ummm i think isn't possible for free , there are thousands of hours in Many kinds of works, it's only a demo ??

Freemium means that the game is free on a basic level and you can enjoy the game at no cost. But you pay extra (real money or game cash) to obtain premium parts of the game such as certain cars, access to tracks, fresh content, a turbo button , etc. I'm sure EA plans to recover their development costs plus some extra.