Sony Online Entertainment president John Smedley reckons there are big opportunities for those developing free-to-play titles for console.

That’s because in his experience, console players handily outspend those on PC players.

“The PS4 has been monetizing amazingly well – between 3 and 3.5x the monetization rate of the PC,” said Smedley in an interview with Gamasutra.

“Seeing that kind of difference in pay rate between the PC and the PS4 is really astounding – it shows there’s a real market there.”

Even those playing SOE’s DC Universe Online on PlayStation 3 are monetizing at roughly double the rate of players on PC, he added.

What’s more, the console F2P market is young enough to be growing at a rapid clip.

“It certainly benefitted us to be early,” said Smedley.

“But the market is growing so fast, and there are so many new players every day, that it’s definitely still early days.

“It’s like the early days of social games – it’s that good.”

As such, Smedley predicts that over the next 12-18 months the overall quality of F2P games on console will rise as more and more developers enter the market.

Meanwhile, SOE will implement a development path that sees it use Steam’s Early Access service to launch H1Z1 on PC, then look to bring it to PlayStation consoles.