Real Racing 3 to be free-to-play

We've already seen numerous teasers of Firemonkey's upcoming racing sequel, Real Racing 3. The game looks to have the best graphics that the series has ever had, and it will include all new tracks, including real tracks, as well as made-up tracks in real locations. However, publisher Electronic Arts has announced that they plan to offer the upcoming game for free.

In an interview with Bloomberg, EA's senior vice president for mobile and social game development Nick Earl said that the publisher plans to offer Real Racing 3 for free in order to distribute the game to a wider audience. Real Racing games in the past have typically been priced in $5-$10 range, so a price tag of $0 is definitely intriguing.

Mobile games at Electronic Arts generated about $100 million in revenue during the company's fiscal third quarter, so it seems that's a huge avenue for the publisher, so it'll be interesting how the company will bring in revenue with Real Racing 3, which it seems like in-app purchases might be the way that EA will go for this new game.

That wouldn't be too surprising, since Real Racing 3 will feature 900 different events and 600 hours of total gameplay, according to Earl. It'll be interesting to see how much of that we'll have to pay for in in-app purchases. EA didn't mention anything about in-app purchases, but I'm sure we'll here more details shortly. Real Racing 3 releases later this month on February 28.

[via Bloomberg]