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The Blessing of Curse

Curse Inc CEO Hubert Thieblot on how the WoW add-on site became a multi-million dollar business

GamesIndustry.biz While you have the premium subscription, how important is it that you continue to offer content for free?
Hubert Thieblot

I think we'll always have 99 per cent of the content for free - that's really where the internet is right now. It seems that people are willing to pay for extra services, but not content... except when you're a very big print brand, for example...

So we keep working on the basis of providing everything for free, and if we see that there's an extra feature that we can build and charge for, we'll do it - but most of the time we don't charge for new features.

GamesIndustry.biz 2009 was a bit of a quiet year for the MMO space, but already 2010 is gearing up to be a bit more spectacular - possibly World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, definitely Star Wars and Star Trek games... what are you most looking forward to?
Hubert Thieblot

I think the MMO industry is facing a real challenge right now. A lot of people are playing catch-up with Blizzard and the quality of the content in World of Warcraft. I think that we're going to see some really high-quality MMOs starting in Q4, 2010 and into 2011-2012.

I'm personally really looking forward to console MMOs, because when you think about it, if 50 per cent of Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 owners are online, that means that there are nearly 35 million next-gen consoles able to run an MMO now. That's already three times bigger than the PC MMO market - the hardcore PC market.

I'm really looking forward to seeing who is going to take the MMO market on console, because that spot is available right now.

GamesIndustry.biz The console space is pretty much a closed book to the add-on space though, so how would that affect your business?
Hubert Thieblot

Well, add-ons is only 50 per cent of the traffic right now, and the other 50 per cent is really engaging users with news, forums and databases around games.

GamesIndustry.biz But in terms of the needs of the user, WoW has established without any doubt that gamers do want to be able to customise their gaming experience - so would you advise console MMOs to try and include that sort of thing?
Hubert Thieblot

Oh yes, I'd definitely try to work with Sony and Microsoft to see how add-ons could be implemented on their consoles. They're actually becoming like PCs anyway, so I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be possible.

Hubert Thieblot is the CEO of Curse Inc. Interview by Phil Elliott.

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