Electronic Arts is one of the first big Western game developers / publishers to embrace the rapidly growing ‘free to play’ micro transaction based industry. Free to play MMORPGs / MMO games are huge in Asia and have only started to become popular here in North America and Europe. The few ‘extremely’ popular free to play game in the West are MapleStory, Shaiya and RuneScape – but that’s about it. Everything else is pretty small – but still growing. Electronic Arts finally entered the free to play business with the launch of Battlefield Heroes – a cartoony MMO third person shooter from the enormously popular ‘Battlefield’ franchise. The game is technically still in the ‘beta’ phase – but it’s still extremely functional and popular. It’s actually one of the best free to play shooters out there.
After the enormous success of Battlefield Heroes – Electronic Arts decided to launch BattleForge – a 3D Fantasy MMORTS / Card game hybrid – as a free to play game. BattleForge was originally developed and planned to be launched as a standalone ‘pay to play’ PC game, but EA made a solid decision in launching it as a free to play title. The fact that the game is free to play allows it to reach a much larger audience. So far from both of these free to play titles have done very well since their launch. Hopefully EA will continue to develop new free to play titles.
Sony actually decided to ‘experiment’ in the free MMO business as well. They launched Free Realms about a year ago and have since enjoyed enormous success with it. Free Realms is a casual / social MMORPG geared towards teens – but just about anyone of any age can enjoy Free Realms. I know Frogster has been on the ball with free to play MMORPGs – as they are the folks behind Gates of Andaron and Runes of Magic – both World of Warcraft clones. They have also developed a whole bunch of browser games. Hopefully though – more Western companies start embracing the free to play industry.
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