There's also No Man's Land. http://gadgets.ndtv.com/games/news/playstation-3-gets-no-man-s-land-a-free-to-play-shooter-game-234223

Dust 514 isn't first-party, but it is a third-party exclusive.

Ever heard of League of Legends?

Yeah, Sony have been embracing F2P for quite a while. Microsoft have too, really.

Aside from Dust 514 which people have already mentioned, there's also:

- DC Universe Online (recently went F2P on PS3)

- Pretty much everything in Playstation Home (No man's land, Home Tycoon; Mercia Fractured Realms etc.)

- Phantasy Star Online 2 (coming to Vita next year)

- Spartacus Legends (coming next year to PS3 + 360)

So while it's great that Wii-U is embracing it, it's not especially a huge revelation.

As mentioned Sony has Dust 514 and Phantasy Star 2. Don't forget PlayStation Home's large collection, along with Free Realms, DC Universe, and Vita games like Tales of Montezuma Blitz, Treasure Park, Fireworks, Table Soccer, Cliff Diver, and Froshiber Says.

My advice, reword OP and/or admit the thread is irrelevant unless you argue a case F2P is going to be more important to Nintendo's target market.

I'm sure many small games have. I'm assuming, though, that you're targeting larger budget games. The real issue with this topic is that many successful games started out as Paid games (Team Fortress 2) and switched to F2P later on in their life. It's hard to analyze those games on a profitability level due to the changes made.

But yeah, League of Legends has definitely made money. It's pretty much the most played "core" game in existence right now. From what I understand, Tribes: Ascend is doing great as well (although there are no released revenue numbers from them as far as I'm aware). 

As more companies make real efforts to build solid core F2P titles, we'll have more to discuss on this topic. Let's see how Dota 2 and Warface do!

Aside from all of that, however, my main concern is that the same industry professionals who cry out that F2P is the future, also cry out that consoles are doomed. Then they completely skip over the fact that consoles are adopting F2P titles. Why are they doing this?

PS3 also has Free Realms. That's the first thing I thought when I saw the thread title. Guy above is correct as well, Dust 514 doesn't really work under your assumption.

Sony apparently doesn't have a very open and supportive F2P system, as noted by the article I linked to in one of my previous points. Crytek is apparently not being supported to publish Warface on the system. http://www.freemmostation.com/news/crytek-conspiracy-microsoft-sony-and-nintendo-against-f2p/

My thread is still relevant, even if you don't feel like addressing all the points I made.

Why are the same industry professionals who herald F2P gaming (and doom console gaming) not talking positively (or at all) about F2P games heading to consoles, such as Nintendo is openly supporting?

If Nintendo so nonchalantly is open towards F2P gaming, and Sony and Microsoft do not open up more than they currently are, then it could be a big play in the future. If Nintendo does take the reigns on this F2P gaming venture, you can bet Sony and Microsoft will follow suit in the coming years.

I expected this. And all I have seen released are huge $$$ figures for capital investment into the company, and huge playerbase numbers. If F2P was a commercial success in profit they'd be releasing those figures as well, but they aren't.

In an interview I found, Tribes developer dodged the profitability question. That's the only mention of its cashflow I can find; again there are big player numbers but no evidence of success.

All in all I think F2P is a huge bubble attracting venture capital in increasingly large amounts before it folds.

I do believe F2P works as a lifetime extender to games, when the dev costs have been paid off like TF2, but no amount of $100 vanity monocles can make up for every player putting down $50 on release.

The one concrete example I know of is that despite the LoL tournament viewing figures being 4-5x what SC2 pulls, the SC2 market is far more valuable to sponsors as they know each person is willing to spend money on what they enjoy.

Looks like I skimmed over some. It makes it seem even weirder that so many industry professionals are up in arms about the death of consoles and rise of F2P gaming yet the two aren't mutually exclusive.

Come on man, at least read the whole thread or my OP edits! You're a mod for cryin' out loud. :P

Zynga was making TONS of bank, right up until the total collapse.

Then there's Valve. Tons of mobile game companies (some of these have seen boom-bust cycles similar to Zynga's). Campanies in Asia that we've never heard of.

Free-to-play seems to work really well for some kinds of games, but it's no panacea. Plenty of free-to-play horror stories to accompany the successes. I find the kind of game design it encourages to be downright poisonous, so count me among those who hope the concept has peaked.