The exact pricing strategy of the Xbox One Killer Instinct reboot are under wraps for now, but a few new details have emerged to help clarify the game's "free-to-play" moniker.
According to Microsoft Studios’ Kenn Lobb, the exact pricing strategy for the upcoming Xbox One-exclusive Killer Instinct reboot will be announced at Gamescom next month. However, Lobb also had a few details to share in the meantime during an interview with Gamespot.
In the interview, Lobb states point blank that Killer Instinct will not be a free-to-play game. Interested fans will be able to purchase the entire game at once for a standard price if they want but players who aren’t quite sold on the game’s premise can opt instead to try out the “demo” version:
"We're going to take Jago, you can say he's a demo – it's not a free to play game. Jago is a demo where you have everything. What's free is you have Jago, Jago's practice mode, you can fight against any AI character. More importantly, you're in the one shard of the online gaming community, so you can take your Jago out and fight against anybody – even if it's a character that you don't have."
Lobb went on to explain that, with the “demo” version, content such as new characters can be purchased piecemeal:
"Let's say you didn't want to buy everything and you decide you kind of like Glacius. You can just buy Glacius."
As much as Lobb may want to deny it, this pricing strategy does sound an awful lot like a F2P model. Interested fans will have to wait until Gamescom to get the skinny on how much both the full game and individual characters will cost but it is nice that Microsoft is at least letting players try before they buy.
