Free Realms – Sony’s MMO Future?
It’s hard to assess the impact of Free Realms, Sony’s ambitious attempt to tap the kids MMO market. The game is ‘free’ to play but relies instead on an optional subscription, micro-transactions and integration with real-world products. The game could either chug along steadily in the background, or signal a new revolution in gaming.
It’s certainly the first high-budget attempt to tap into the market basically created by games like Runescape and Club Penguin – presumably the target market is kids that play games on their parents’ computers. But it’s a bit of a mystery age-group and market, it seems to me – somehow Club Penguin pulls in the players, but ‘better’ games like Toontown Online seem to have been only limited successes.
I think Sony have cleverly realised that their potential market comes to such a game through the web browser – hence the game essentially runs that way from the start, and is accessible only via their website or through Miniclip, the portal of choice for most browser-based gamers.
The game itself is a very nicely presented 3D MMO with a mixture of WOW-style scenery, cute characters, a ‘safe’ communication system lifted from Toontown, and a series of minigames and other activities. It looks to me like combat is an optional minigame here, rather than a reason for being – the emphasis looks to be on apparel, pets, exploration etc. Whether there’s enough there to keep the kids coming back day after day is the issue, as always – that sort of depth doesn’t come overnight.
Where it gets interesting is when Sony launch Free Realms through the Playstation Network for PS3 users at some as-yet-unannounced date. The company have been dropping a few hints that they see PSN as the key to their future development as a company. Sony’s strange PS3 community hub Home is a highly visible part of that, though it’s yet to impress anybody as yet. And next up is The Agency, the Spy-themed MMO which will probably be Sony’s adult equivalent of the Free Realms model.
So Sony is going to seriously attempt to try and pull the MMO market away from WOW and over to their consoles? Ambitious. And maybe doomed to failure, but it should be fascinating to see them try.
