[exLupo]

I'm going to back Malorn up on this one. A freemium model, as stated above, will be welcoming to both the normal western "pay for the box" FPS crowd as well as the new breed of persistent growth FPS player who is accustomed to the cash shop. Erring on the side of income fairness, the cash shop won't be pay2win but it's a little (imo the best) of both worlds to attract both markets.

The only possible hitch is ingrained prejudice. There's not much more to be said other than that western gamers have this strong and irrational bias against freemium titles. There is a wealth of evidence against all of the complaints that people bring against the genre and very little to back up the bad sides out of what, anymore, amount to outliers or specific genres.

Western gamers need to get over their knee-jerk "if it's free, it's not for me" bias. I have yet to see anyone successfully argue that idea that free play ruins games. The closest I've seen is people arguing it, getting shot down by the facts and then they stick their fingers in their ears.

With the growing popularity with of freemium titles (new and retrofit), the western buying power is growing more and more welcoming of the model. There's already a whole generation of gamer that hasn't gamed through the horror of EQ1's failed pay2win experiment. Those gamers who are blindly against the concept due to old fears will convert or die off as the years roll on. Hopefully their feelings won't hurt PS2's player numbers.