SOE: Free Realms 'close to' 5 million users

by David Hinkle { Jul 25th 2009 at 1:00AM }

We've been following the saga of SOE's free-to-play MMO, Free Realms, for some time now. First, it reached one million a mere 18 days after release, only to add another million in May. And, as if that wasn't enough, another million folks signed up a month later. It appears the game has no ceiling, though, as SOE president John Smedley told Comic-Con attendees (via Gamasutra) that the game is close to five million users now.

Smedley attributed the success to the free-to-play model (uh, you think?) and said that folks have been surprisingly receptive to microtransactions. Because of this crazy rise in popularity, The Joystiq Hall of Science™ has stepped in to offer its own projection. According to our figures, we're estimating the game will have 17 billion users by Columbus Day of this year.

is this a psn game?

No its a PC mmo!

Try it out its fun and its free..

www.freerealms.com

Its coming to PSN though

Still waiting for the PSN release...

its clear sony are bringing this up to be a massive online game popular especially amoungst younger generation.

and then as if just like that it will make it on psn. along with a free realms ps3 bundle with lots of items included.

Nice numbers.

SOE should advertise it lots, on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace... etc. That number would double in no time.

Welldone Sony.

Wow and some people said it wouldnt get very far....

It would be much more beneficial to get microtransaction sales numbers. It's a free MMO. Who cares if 5 million people use it? It matters how many of the 5 million that tried it out are actually not only sticking around, but putting money into the game.

I would like to see the "real" numbers. Are they counting every single person who downloaded it or created a new account? What's the returning visitors?

At least w/ WoW and others, they can easily say active paying accounts whereas with this, they can make up anything they want.