14 DAY TRIAL // Free Realms, the free-to-play MMO aimed at a younger audience that Sony Online Entertainment finally brought to the PlayStation 3 in recent weeks, has the potential to get close to 100 million players in the coming years, according to at least one of the leaders of the company.
John Smedley, who is the president of Sony Online Entertainment, has told Gameindustry.biz that, the current 17 million players represents “a phenomenal number, and we're very pleased with its success--and it's really keeping going. I don’t see this thing stopping until it hits 100 million. I think it could take five or six years--that should give you some idea.”
He added, “That endless supply of children that have a hunger for gaming, as long as we keep improving it and make sure it’s still relevant - which we do every month with patches - means that we expect the game to have a long life.”
Free Realms is at the moment available on the PC and on the PlayStation 3, but Sony could create versions for the PlayStation Portable and even for the upcoming NGP, which should be here by the end of the year.
The game is based upon the free-to-play and micro-transaction mode, meaning that most users will never pay any money to play and will get access to almost all of the game's content in order to create a complex, living MMO.
A small number of gamers will be interested in getting more, including the ability to level up faster and access to some exclusive content, and they will be the ones who play for their gaming time and deliver the revenue that SOE needs in order to keep Free Realms running.
SOE recently laid off a number of developers and announced that it was canceling The Agency MMO.