It's how obvious it was that ESO was never going to stay pay-to-play, and how video gameВ consumersВ should think twice before paying big bucks to get into a new gameВ at launch.

The bottom line, though, isn't how smart my colleagues are. Yeah, I know it's a little suspicious that I won my own contest, but I think what's really telling about this is how close we all were: Even the biggest 'misses' were only off by 10 weeks in either direction.ДЄlternately, if youВ measure our predictions to the date the game actually goes free to play (March 17 for PC, with Xbox and PlayStation to follow in June), not the date the move was announced, thenВ Alex Knapp edges out Erik KainВ by a single day -and our collective guess was still only off by 9 weeks, or 63 days. Individually, we were all very close, too. That means our group predicted the announcement would come on Tuesday, January 13. On average, the six members of the Forbes Games team who contributed to the pool thoughtВ that Elder Scrolls Online would throw in the towelВ afterВ just 284 days, or a little over 9 months from launch. So I asked themВ all to answer a question: On what date will Elder Scrolls Online announce it's giving up on its subscription model and going free to pay?Д¬ollectively, theyВ nailed it.

The consensus among my Forbes Games colleagues was that developer ZeniMax Online Studios and publisher Bethesda Softworks were going to drop the paywall as soon as they'd wrung as much cash from hardcore Elder Scrolls fans as they could. That's $224.88 to play the standard version of the game for twelve months, and $264.88 for the Imperial Version.В There's not many gamers willing to shell that kind of money out -and the few who would are probably alreadyВ deeply committed to another MMO, like

Ps4 elder scrolls online free to play