The Weekly Checkpoint 19

Welcome to the weekend everyone!  It's time to round-up this past week's gaming news, and this time we're taking a look at EA's decision to sue Zynga, as well as Electronic Arts reporting that they're making more money from their PC games than PS3 currently, SWtoR will be going free to play this Fall, WoW lost 1.1 million subscribers in the last three months, Sony is still having money problems, Namco had a very lucrative Q1, and Bethesda has announced some of the actors who will be lending their voices to Dishonored.

The Weekly Checkpoint 12

It hit a few technical snags, but we finally managed to get the new Checkpoint up.  This week we talk about cheaters in Max Payne, the possibility of Star Wars: The Old Republic going free to play, and Diablo III's real money auction house going live.

News: Star Wars: The Old Republic Going F2P (Somewhat)

Looks like Bioware is drifting to a somewhat free model come July for their Old Republic MMORPG.  At that point, the game will allow people to play the game for free whenever they want, but they'll only be able to go up to level 15.  So, it's pretty much the same as WoW's system of letting players futz around in low-level areas to their hearts content without paying a dime.

Of course, the question is whether this will be a slippery slope towards a full-on F2P model for the game.  Unlike WoW, TOR doesn't have 10 million subscribers to profit from, and the game has been riddled with problems like lack of subscribers, relatively unpopulated servers, and there doesn't seem to be much on the horizon that will convince the unconverted to invest their time, let alone their money, in the game.