As a CoH subscriber I got a chance to apply to the Tabula Rasa beta, and a couple of questions in the little survey they had me complete caught my eye.
- Have you ever purchased a service or made a payment via your mobile phone? (e.g. via SMS)
- Do you own a mobile phone?
- If yes, have you already paid to play games on your mobile phone?
Are there any other MMO’s out there right now which use mobile phones as a payment option?
Gordon Walton was always convinced that the key to letting MMOs truly break out in to the mainstream was to allow people to charge the game to their phone bill. No creditcard, no gamecards, just a simple phonecall to make the game work.
Paying by phone is big everywhere but North America.
Yeah, quite a numbers of companies are doing it over here. I think Everquest did it ever since it launched in Europe. Paying via credit card is not as common in Germany as it is in the US. Publishers would be missing out on quite a number of customers were they to ignore alternative payment options. Valve specifically is going to incorporate additional payment options for markets such as Germany in the months to come.
-Julian