farbot.com

Free Realms made headlines with hitting 1 million registered accounts in 17 days, but they've blown that milestone out of the water by getting their second million users just shy of 1 month after launch. I like this game -- the mini-games are fun to pick up and play in short bursts and it runs on my laptop just fine -- but even I'm going to admit this is just a ridiculous amount of registrations. And for an SOE game no less!

That said, the first thing they did after the 1 million user mark is make the loading screen celebrate it...by taking up the bottom quarter or so with a pitch to become a paying member. At $5 a month it's cheap as far as MMOs go, and does offer premium features all unlocked at that price, but I already saw enough of this in-game with certain content being locked for members and the constant presence of opportunities to see what Station Cash can get you if you buy it.

Lest we forget Free Realms is supposed to be coming to the PS3 sometime this year, and I imagine its runaway success at least at registering new players will give them a bit of a resource boost to get it on the PS3 sooner rather than later. It could use some free-to-play online gameplay that would completely overshadow anything Home has to offer today.

But you know what would really be a killer app? Free Realms on the PSP. It's got the storage for it, it's a pretty lightweight download on the PC, and it could work and drive sales with that crucial younger market Sony really wants to get its hooks into. SOE says 75% of their players are under 17. I'm just sayin'.

Seen on IGN, and FreeRealms itself.