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Developer Ngmoco, known for popular games such as Rolando and Star Defense, is reportedly planning to shift to a “Freemium” pricing model for its game lineup, doing away with charging up front for titles. Already found in games such as Eliminate and Touch Pets Dogs, the free-to-play approach gives away the games for free and relies on in-app purchases to generate revenue by selling additional content and power-ups within each game. In an interview with Gamasutra, Ngmoco VP Alan Yu cited high piracy rates and the difficulty in selling iPhone games at higher price points as partial reasons for this change.

Unfortunately, the highly-anticipated Rolando 3 does not fit into this new free-to-play pricing model. Speaking with IGN, Ngmoco founder and CEO Neil Young indicated that Rolando 2 had not quite met the company’s sales expectations and confirmed that Rolando 3 has been put on hold until such time as ngmoco could decide the best way in which to deliver the Rolando franchise effectively as free-to-play games. [via Touch Arcade]