Free Realms Approaches the Five-Million-Player Mark

A few days ago at Comic-Con, Sony Online Entertainment president John Smedley spoke about the success of Free Realms, their free-to-play MMORPG that relies on microtransactions for a business model. The game was released at the end of April, and by mid-June there were upwards of three million registered users. Now that total is approaching five million, with no sign of slowing down. Min Kim, another panelist at the discussion, said, "When people started talking about it back in 2003 or 2004, people said Western games would never want to do this, to play a game for free and then buy items. And now everybody is saying, 'We're going to have microtransactions as part of our business model.'"

5m players or registered users?

[Lazy Jones]

I find such claims dubious, then again I don't know whether the pay-to-play games producers include people who take the free 14-day trials in their claimed player numbers...

Well, if it works...

[Sumbius]

I have to admit that this is one of the free MMPORPGs that I haven't played, but I know many games that use this business model and it works. The so said "free" part attracts player to the game and most start paying for items soon after. Still, I'm really amazed by how they managed to get an estimate of 5 million players in such a short while. Lets just hope that they don't get greedy and start compensating the lack of monthly fee income by making the item prices too high, like Perfect World International has done (in my opinion atleast), where a simple mount can cost up to 60 euros, while on other servers, such as the Malaysian server they cost only a few bucks. Well we will see...

Re:I'm willing to buy stuff in those games.

[julesh]

Agreed. I'm normally a cheap-assed bastard who will go so far out of his way to avoid paying for stuff you wouldn't believe it, but I've shelled out cash for items in utransaction mmos before. The model does work.

Re:So if I were to jump off the cliff...

[Jurily]

It seems a wiser idea would be to give the users a chance to love your game THEN introduce microtransactions, perhaps to allow users gain an edge during endgame.

Fuck no. Nobody wants to play with someone who constantly tries to bribe the DM. And nobody wants to play with a DM who can be bribed.

You already have a working business model out there, follow that: in WoW everyone is equal.

Re:Winders Only, of course....

[JasonDT]

I wouldn't know whether it was a browser game or not... as soon as it detected that I was not running windows the whole process stopped...

iTunes users rescue Sony

[foniksonik]

iTunes really got people used to micro-transactions... unafraid really. Yes people got a few shocks when they went on a binge and grabbed whatever they felt like for a week or two but then they sobered up and realized that they could easily just get a few new songs a week and they'd be really happy.

Now with the iPhone even more people are used to paying $0.99 for a wide selection of content while getting a lot of value for "free" (they did pay for the phone and mobile account).

All this adds up to a growing population of people who feel very comfortable paying on demand via micro-transactions for bonus entertainment. It's like going to Disneyland or [your local amusement park] - it's not the entrance fee that get you. It's the snacks, toys, shows, lunch, dinner, clothes, etc. The entrance fee is just to weed out those who have money from those who would clog the lines for paying customers.

How Many Buyers?

[Bieeanda]

Five million users, whether they just be one-time registrants or not, is pretty impressive. The thing is, Smed is implying a connection between those users and the cash shop, which just isn't necessarily there. The game is free-to-play. You don't need to subscribe, or to buy gear in the cash shop. I doubt many really have, beyond using the free 100 Store Cash they got from the first or second million milestone celebration.

Cash store games work, but claiming 'five million people spend money at ours!' is disingenuous.

Re:microtransactions

[changedx]

I've played Free Realms to a number of max-level job classes. Paying a $5/month subscription fee increases the number of classes available, from 10 to 15.

Another $5 buys you the best possible weapon in Free Realms, and it is usable at level 1. Tobold has a good writeup here: http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2009/05/limits-of-microtransactions.html [blogspot.com]

Note that Free Realms has no end-game. There are some questlines that open up at max-level (20), but no raiding or group PvP. So that $5 uber-weapon only helps you quest and level faster.