Thursday, July 22, 2010

My theory on why SOE announced a lifetime membership for Free Realms.

As people have heard Free Realms is offering a Lifetime membership for $29.99us until Aug 2, 2010. Now I don't think this will be the last time we see a lifetime sub offered for Free Realms, but next time its offered I think its going to be higher, and the reason I think this is because of the PS3 release.

When Free Realms is released on the PS3 I believe its going to come out in a box for 50-60$ and thats going to include everything that's currently offered in the membership. This gets away from having to worry about having to sell memberships and having restrictions for people without, and eventually we may see memberships phased out for the PC as well. This will than also allow them to sell new areas in the marketplace, instead of adding more restrictions against non-membership players.

The other thing we may see with the release on the PS3, is Sony standardizing the payment methods used in all its games. Right now you can buy cards for the Playstation network and they are separate from the StationCash used in the Marketplace for SOE games. This will allow Sony to just sell one type of card, and its probably easier to release just one type internationally as well. 

Living up in Canada I can't get StationCash cards, I can buy StationCash with my Credit Card, but I prefer buying the actual cards, since you can get a better deal when the have double StationCash weekends. I can however go to my local Walmart, Gamestop, etc and buy a Sony Network card, but Only in 20 and 50 denominations not the 5, 10 and 25 like SationCash. Having cards in smaller amounts also opens up more people buying items from the marketplace, since a 5$ card is much easier for people to buy.

Well that's my theory

RGX

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