Spicy Horse leaves console development for F2P

Spicy Horse is leaving development of traditional console games in favour of free-to-play games.

Speaking to Game Informer studio founder American McGee said he sees mobile devices becoming the new game consoles.

“Our studio wouldn’t consider going back to traditional console development, but I do think we’ll end up being in the right place when consoles come back to us,” McGee said.

“By that I mean we fully expect the definition of ‘console’ to shift radically over the next two years. Our consoles will become our mobile devices (or if you prefer: our mobile devices will become our consoles). We’re seeing the shift taking place already and the development pipeline and technology we’ve built at Spicy is ready to ride the new wave.”

Spicy Horse will now be creating free-to-play, browser- and cloud-based games such as Big Head Bash on Kongregate.

This change comes after Spicy Horse’s partnership with EA on Alice: Madness Returns, a platform action game that didn’t managed to appeal beyond its niche audience.

Speaking about the project, he said: “I feel EA marketing did all they could within the broken system that is wrapped around the marketing and distribution of box product games. Working with EA Partners was, on average, acceptable.”

Backing up his decision, McGee said existing free-to-play games have already generated more profit and a better return on investment “than our console title ever did (or likely will)”.

A number of high-profile console and PC developers have announced their adoption of free-to-play, often at the expense of the console manufacturers and retailers.

In June, Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli said his studio would be exclusively focusing on free-to-play titles after finishing its current generation projects.