You will find an interview taken by our very own ‘Roving Reporter’ Ben Rayner, who attended the World of Tanks event in London yesterday (13/02/2014). He was lucky enough to catch an interview with the European Product Specialist for World of Tanks Xbox 360 Edition, Marvin Hall.
Starting out as a PC title, World of War Tanks had quite a community anyway, how do you feel the community reacted when you brought about the 360 edition?
I think the reaction was quite good, it’s primarily the same type of game so it’s just extending the war gaming family.
Wargaming definitely has a very welcoming community?
Yeah, it’s a great community
Do you think fans were crying out for a console version of the game or did you simply see a gap in the market?
Yeah we saw a gap in the market, obviously with the PC success that we’ve had, we though why not do a console project and try to capture some of that audience.
Does that mean we can expect to see WarPlanes head to console also?
There are no plans yet, I haven’t heard anything.
So what do you think makes World of War Tanks and its community so unique compared to other games and even other free-to-play titles?
I think it’s due to the fact that it’s an MMO title. There are no bots in games, you know you’re dealing with real people and with the 360 you’ve got all the chat options so you can get to know people more, send messages and have a chat and out forums are where people can meet up and talk about their favourite game, it’s great.
Obviously it’s a free-to-play title, but it has purchasable items and unlocks within it. Recently, Wargaming’s CEO (Victor Kislyi) pointed out that for the PC version, 75% of players don’t spend any money and he believes that the 360 version will be no different. Do you agree with him or do you expect fans will spend their money?
I see where he’s coming from. You know with the PC version we distribute it, we create it, we do everything. With Xbox and the partnership with Microsoft, they have certain requirements obviously we agree with. We wouldn’t have gone with them if we didn’t agree with that, so I think for the Xbox 360 players, they have to purchase Xbox Live Gold to play multiplayer games that’s the bottom line so it’s a requirement that’s there.
Do you think having the 360 version available will attract a more diverse audience to the scene, perhaps even a slightly younger market?
Yeah definitely. I mean even with our PC version we have a very mixed community of older guys who are very big on World War II history to the younger guys who just love playing online games and it’s the same thing for the Xbox really.
And, aside from the great work you guys are doing at Wargaming, if you could have been involved in any other game (past or present) what would it be?
Wow that is a tough one. I play a lot of football games so maybe some sort of athletic game.
Catch a glimpse of what Ben got up to at the event by watching this video:
//
