14 DAY TRIAL // It seems that when superheroes are not attractive enough for gamers all can be made right by making them free, as Sony Online Entertainment discovered after moving its DC Universe Online MMO to the free-to-play business model, allowing anyone interested to get into the game and experience the content for free.
Lorin Jameson, who is the executive director at the Austin studio of Sony Online Entertainment, has said in a statement that, “1 million new players have joined DCUO with a 50/50 split between PC and PS3. DC Universe Online’s transition to free-to-play has been welcomed by the community and gamers with heroic enthusiasm.”
The increase in players is not too surprising but it's important to keep in mind that the game only dropped subscriptions on November 1, which means that about 100,000 new players joined every day.
SOE had previously commented on the rise of concurrent players, saying that their number went up by 1,000 percent, but the new numbers are interesting because they also include the PlayStation 3 version of the game.
Sony has not yet said how many of those new players have chosen to also use some real world money to get extra content in the game or even go for a subscription package, figures that will be crucial for DC Universe Online in the long term.
The Sony made MMO, which benefits from the use of all the important heroes of the DC Comics universe and most important locations, has been launched during the month of January of this year, after a series of delays.
Traditionally Sony has been uninterested in moving to the free-to-play model but lately it seems to have understood that the future of the MMO genre depends on creating large player bases and determining a minority of gamers to pay for content.
The upcoming Planetside 2 will also a free-to-play model.