You may have seen the Free Realms logo lurking around the Playstation Store, and you may have even been tempted by the prospect of a free-to-play MMO on consoles, but did you ever think that the game would amass 20 million registered users? That’s the figure that Sony Online Entertainment are proudly touting having only launched the title on PC and Mac in May 2009. It was ported to the PS3 in March of this year and was the console’s first free-to-play MMO.
To put this staggering figure into perspective, World of Warcraft – seemingly the planet’s most ubiquitous MMO – comparatively only has 11.1 million subscribers as of August 2011. Of course there’s a clear distinction between “users”, “subscribers” and “active players”, but SOE’s figures still suggest a bright future for Free Realms and the rest of the free-to-play MMO space.
