Wargaming CEO Victor Kislyi says that while World of Tanks will be free-to-play, Microsoft is still requiring that you sign up for an Xbox Live membership to play the game.

"With Microsoft, unfortunately it's not 100 percent free-to-play because it requires the Gold subscription to Xbox Live membership, but that's a Microsoft requirement which is valid for us and for Activision and for EA and all other partners."

"They cannot drop it for us because they would have to drop it for everyone and it would be a total mess for them. This we have to tolerate, which I am not happy about. I would rather add another 30-40 million non-golden members and they will monetise occasionally."

I guess it doesn't really make it free to play then? What is the point of of a free to play game if you still have to pay for gold? I guess it's not that big of a deal though, as most people who own an Xbox already have gold.

World of Tanks is coming to the Xbox 360 soon (no exact release date yet) and will use separate servers from those playing the Windows version. The 360 version is being developed by Wargaming West studio (seperate from the Windows version).