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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 »

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.

Should we stop counting how many millions of people have created accounts on Free Realms? They've just announced that 3 million is their latest milestone, which they have hit in under 7 weeks since launch. Another celebratory set of free gifts -- this one oriented towards the in-game pets -- is being dropped in users' accounts that must be claimed by June 19th.

Guinness World Records also recognized them during E3 last week for conducting a concert live and in a virtual space simultaneously. You'd think someone would have done this before.

I haven't played Free Realms since just after I picked up my 2 million member gift. I've still found their upsell pitch to be very aggressive compared to that of Runes of Magic, which opts to let your compatriots kind of sell the paid services for them by parading around in-game with them. Given that nobody else in my household plays Free Realms yet I'm much more likely to put money into Runes of Magic, which I have been playing quite a bit lately while my PlayStation 3 sits untouched at a repair shop.

Seen on Massively.

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.