Hot on the heels of the announcement that Team Fortress 2 was to become a free to play title, a juicy new rumour has surfaced thanks to develop online.
The rumour is simple - Microsoft is allegedly talking to various developers about bringing free to play titles to Xbox live. Xbox live is due to receive an update in the future that will allow gamers to seamlessly purchase items in game, which could lead the way for free to play titles that typically make their money from microtransactions.
Details beyond this are scarce; if it turns out to be true, there"s no guarantee that it would incorporate all Live platforms, or just the likes of the Xbox 360, nor is there any guarantee that you wont still need an Xbox Live subscription to play the "free" titles.
If true, this shouldn"t come as a huge surprise to anyone. There appears to be a shift in the gaming industry towards free to play, microtransaction based games. Even successful titles, such as City of Heroes, have decided to go the free to play route and recently Valve added support for free to play titles to Steam. Games companies like Zynga have shown that it"s entirely possible to make incredible amounts of money from free to play titles, such as their various Facebook games and Microsoft are almost certainly going to want to get a piece of that pie, eventually.
Microsoft never comment on rumour or speculation, so file this under "maybe" for now.