WOW, 5 million is huge great for Sony. i never imagined it will reach that much so soon

Yes, maybe sony have learned that advertising on the television will mean a higher user ratio..

they advertised this on t.v?

Why... this? and not...well other things.

Free Realms is advertised on Nick jr.

Lol, I never even heard of it!
I doubt that many users are willing to pay for the content though.
I wish more MMO's would follow the Lineage model where you only purchase the add-on's and the game itself is free to play, perhaps I'd venture into one as well.
The pure f2p MMO's are usually way too lacking in content to be viable over time.

Free mmo's can have a huge number of users.

But its the active users that count. These numbers are largely useless to estimate success.

By the way, just like the Wii this is advertised in the Parenting magazines you find at the Pediatrics offices or OBGYN offices.

The game has tons available for free users and along with micro-transactions the game has a subscription based versions for the people who wish to expand the game and have more games, quests, etc... available to them.

So we are not only wondering how many people are still active or how many people pay for micro-transactions but we are also wondering how many people are paying the subscription fee to expand the game.

Also remember that this is free to play. When Sony puts out numbers like "5M users" I am pretty sure the advertising companies see this and then proceed to advertise themselves on the site, in the game, etc...

Remember Sony makes money this way as well so only wondering about how many people remain using it isn't exactly going to tell you how well it is doing.

In this game you do not see ads streaming on and off billboards, instead you could walk into a shop in the game and see a giant coffee mug with a Starbucks logo on it.

There is plenty of this in the game as well and contributed to Sony's income.

Yeah well i star to care when i see the active player numbers.

I bet it'll pass WoW in number by the end of the year.