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SOE is proud to note that their free to play tween-focused MMO has reached 9 million players in under a year. They've also recently added mounts to the in-game store, which is kind of odd considering that you really just need to push a button to automatically walk anywhere -- when you're not teleporting much closer to your target first, that is -- but hey, more customization is important in free to play games.

I stopped playing Free Realms long ago primarily because I couldn't convince the Mrs to jump in, and my kids are still too young for it. By the time they're old enough to take any interest in it, I imagine the landscape will be even more different, but if you've got kids in the target age range, well, apparently you can do a lot worse.

What's not in this press release? Anything about the PS3 version of the game. See the full press release after the jump. Read more »

Tonight I decided to check into Free Realms, and after doing the normal login via Firefox I waited for the game to load up. I closed up some old tabs to tidy up but when I heard no crunching of the hard drive I clicked back over to the site to see what was up. Read more »

What's the free-to-play niche like these days? Not much of a niche anymore with the likes of Free Realms, Runes of Magic, and Dungeons & Dragons Online stomping around eating up player-hours left and right. Read more »

Free Realms continues to blaze a trail in the youth-oriented MMO market. It has officially racked up 5 million players to date and in a recent event Sony Online Entertainment president John Smedley shared some surprising findings related to making a game inviting to the pre-credit-card crowd that can also make money. Read more »

Free Realms continues to rake in the users and, ostensibly, microtransaction revenues. The free-to-play, casual-focused, tween-oriented game has reached 5 million players, and it seems to have been part of a push to add microtransaction-based marketplaces to all of their games.

I'm surprised to see subscription games like EQ1 and EQ2 this accepting of microtransactions. I would think the subscribers would expect to get everything the game has to offer at little additional cost. A recent interview with the developers of Dungeons and Dragons Online about how subscribers will beneft under the new free to play model sounded like the best way to go to me -- subscribers get a monthly stipend of points to spend in the store. Free Realms doesn't have this option for subscribers, I believe, and even double-stacks the fees by making some Station Cash shop items only be purchasable by subscribers. That doesn't sit well with me -- either let me buy the content a la carte or subscribe to it.

What model do you like more? All microtransactions like Runes of Magic, a mix of subscription and microtransactions like Free Realms, or all three options like Dungeons And Dragons Online is planning to do?

Seen on IGN's Voodoo Extreme.

From Aeropause.