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Sony opened its online kingdom Free Realms on Wednesday - its response to the success of the browser-based role-playing game, Runescape.
Britain’s Jagex has found a lucrative market among pre-teen boys and girls for Runescape, which has similarities to the world’s most successful online role-playing game World of Warcraft.
However, while WoW needs to be bought and installed as a desktop program along with a monthly subscription, Runescape will play inside any browser and on a laptop or PC with the most basic graphics capabilities.
It is also free, although the company makes money from premium subscriptions and is growing at around 35 per cent a year.
While Runescape has attracted around 6m players a month, Sony is aiming for tens of millions of users with Free Realms.
The game differs from WoW and Runescape in not confining players to professions, factions or guilds. Sony says players can be a ninja one minute and a go-kart driver the next.
While the game is launched from the browser, it takes the form of a full-screen downloaded client, with the website being used to store account information and introduce social networking elements.
Electronic Arts has taken the same approach with Battlefield Heroes, a Second World War role-playing game still in beta. EA’s free game allows players to choose between being a soldier, gunner and commando and fight in one of two rival armies. They can drive tanks and jeeps and fly a plane. Virtual goods such as outfits, guns and abilities, such as being able to run faster, can be purchased.
Sony expects to earn most of its revenues from virtual goods, but it has the same $5 a month premium subscription as Runescape. It has also introduced both a virtual- and physical-world trading-card game for Free Realms.
Sony and EA’s games mark the entry of the major publishers into virtual worlds for younger players. It will be interesting to see what impact they can have and whether theirs is the right approach to a market largely created by smaller independent companies to date.
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