Sony Online: Close to 5 million registered players for Free Realms

Posted Jul 24th 2009 1:00PM by John Callaham
Filed under: MMO

Sony Online's launch of Free Realms, their free-to-play fantasy MMO game, is pretty much a success no matter how you cut it. Gamasutra reports that during a panel at the San Diego Comic-Con on Thursday, Sony Online's head John Smedley stated that Free Realms now has "close to" 5 million registered players.

Free Realms officially launched on April 28 and reached the 1 million registered player mark well within a month of that date In mid-June, Sony Online announced it had surppassed the 3 million registered player mark. For a game that's had little marketing outside the game industry that's a massive number to reach in so short a time. It also shows that the monhtly subscription model for MMO titles could be on its way out.

Tags: free-realms, san-diego-comic-con, sony-online, sony-online-entertainment

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

"For a game that's had little marketing outside the game industry"

You must not be watching TV, they've spent a lot of money advertising...Posted at 1:28PM on Jul 24th 2009 by abbottx

Registered does not mean active. I registered my kid, he played for a week, then got bored. Repeated that cycle thrice because we could never remember the pass/account name. Just an example of how misleading registered users is. Yeah the sub model is dying, because wow only has 12million people paying 15 per person(as compared to the huge majority of the 5mill regis paying nothing).Posted at 4:50PM on Jul 27th 2009 by Pavel