Game Reviews

F2P & Internet web browser games become a good business

by admin posted Oct 31,2009

“Free to Play” sounds like an evil spell on the heads of those responsible for World of Warcraft, the most popular and successful massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). 11 million subscribers of WOW have to pay 12 euros a month.

Free to Play, popularly known as F2P, is a business model widely used for over a decade in Asia, Especially in China, which does not need to pay to download the game to play. Runescape was the first game that is benefited by this system in 1999. Revenues are obtained by micro-transactions and players who want to play more advanced features and explore more quests need to pay for those items or pay for upgraded membership account.

The small business generating transactions is enormous MMORPGs. By basing their income on-line sales quotas, micro-payments, selling prepaid cards and other forms other than traditional physical sales in-store, all figures can be maximized . Especially if one takes into account two factors: first, that the bulk of players are from China, Korea, where there is even a monitor for video games, and Asia in general, markets with little transparency. Second, the huge black market that waves below the legal layer in the form of sale of items, characters experienced virtual gold, and so on.

Only in the eBay selling 250,000 artifacts of the game Free Realms from Sony. The agency DFC Intelligence estimates that revenues for World of Warcraft topped EUR 400 million with subscription fees, between 100 and 300 million euros, Fantasy Westward Journey, an Asian success using prepaid cards, MapleStory, pets for children, and Shanda, the Free to Play model.

The market has shifted dramatically in the West in recent months. While the traditional game publishers continue to occur on his face trying to launch subscription-based MMORPG rated franchises such as The Lord of the Rings, who are barely 300,000 subscribers in the best case, other companies that specialize in Free MMORPGs have been the focus U.S. and Europe with unprecedented success.

This is the case of Free Realms, Sony Online Entertainment. In just seven weeks they had more than three million users at a rate of 500,000 new accounts each week. With a target audience with preteens, 9 to 15 years, mixes anything that might like it, according to John Smedley, president of the company. It attests that a type of characters are fairies and their power of persuasion among girls. Without paying a single euro you can visit throughout the country and participate in all missions. They may be sponsored by a trademark, being one more way to cover the costs of service.

The bulk of revenue comes from payments for the kids to improve their characters, with new hairstyles and clothes, or buy pets.

It is a common claim among those responsible for such leisure times of deep crisis, the more the better, because they benefit the public for free entertainment. Spain also has a long tradition of compulsive buying, as demonstrated in the downloads of games and ringtones, which puts us ahead of Europe. All the more reason for the Free to Play is set in our country. In the U.S., selling virtual items for these games has moved this year 1.000 million and the next will be 1.6, according to the study of Inside Virtual Goods. After one month, IMVU receives a million unique visitors, 69% women between 13 and 24. Adolescents are in a three-page catalog of three million objects to improve the character dreamed. 175,000 are sold every day objects.

To date, the graphic quality and superior programming of commercial titles, marked a clear dividing line between the free and what he had to pay. Technological advances, relocation and cheaper tools for creating games have allowed these free titles enjoy the same standard as that of its competitors pay.

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