Gamasutra has an interesting article with commentary from EA Mythic's Mark Jacobs about the newest MMO controversy: Pay-to-Play versus Micro-Transactions.

While Jacobs concedes in the article that the micro-transaction model has been extremely successful in Asia where gamers have become accustomed to it, he adds:

"The microtransaction guys will say that they are more successful. Oh really? I find it very disingenuous when publishers talk about how many people are playing their game but won't talk about how much money they're making.

Frankly, I would rather have one million customers who are all paying to play than 20 million customers with only one million of them paying to play. I can give them better support, I can give them a better game, I can deal with a better community, I have fewer customer service headaches."

The nice thing about our model is that you can do very simple math with it which is what I like 'cause I'm a very simple guy. If we get a million subscribers each month and we charge 15 bucks a month, that's $180 million a year. There's no need to wonder how many people are going to buy how many micro-transactions."

Pretty strong words but of course he'd favor the pay-to-play model since that's where Warhammer lives. *grins*

What do you think? Let us know on the forums.