By Alex Villafania
INQUIRER.net
MANILA, Philippines — Game publishing company Asian Media unveiled a new casual game that will be the company’s first free-to-play.
Asian Media sealed a partnership with Korean game developer NCSoft to launch the game Exteel in the Philippines.
The game is an anime-themed, third-person shooter. Players control “mechanaughts” or armored robots over huge futuristic maps.
The mechanaughts can be armed with various weapons including swords, spears, submachine guns, rifles, rocket launchers, among others.
The mechanaughts’ features can also be customized with booster packs, body armor, and even warpaint.
Despite Exteel being identified as a casual game, its graphics can be compared to many hack-and-slash type online games. Exteel requires a minimum 800 Megahertz processor, 256 megabytes of memory and a 128 Mb videocard.
In an interview, Asian Media Chief Operating Officer Ronald Allan Aquino said they might start closed beta test of the game in Singapore, the Philippines and Malaysia by the first quarter of 2009.
He also explained that the decision to go free-to-play was due to the huge market for such games. In contrast, Asian Media started out selling boxed games and pay-to-play of Lineage II.
For now, Aquino said the local website for Exteel is still being developed, though enthusiasts can visit the game’s official site.
7 Feedbacks on "Asian Media goes free-to-play with Exteel"
Alcarcalimo
If Exteel becomes a successful FTP game for NCSoft, I hope they think it over with L2 as well.
ExcEsc
nice!
Digest
They should have thought about going F2P before, they didn’t even consider that L2 is too late for P2P here in the Philippines. Well, Exteel should be the emergency chute. Better late than never.
Tristan of Heaven
The thing about online games in the Philippines is that hype dictates everything. No matter how hardcore the game is, no matter how eye popping, if it cant amass hype, it wont do very well.
mmoaggro
L2 would never be a F2P game as stated by NCSoft. this was a long time coming for an Asian Media there were rumblings within the company during the transition form CBT to OBT about a new casual game and one of it was exteel.
ninetails
Wohoo. Can’t wait
anon
I’m not so hot with Exteel. I tried it before thinking that it was a Mech themed FPS only to find out that it was a “fake FPS” meaning you can only hit the target if he’s locked on to your crosshair. You can’t estimate and shoot ahead of his movements unlike in real FPS games.
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