In a new report issued by industry and consumer research firm Parks Associates; the subscription model is rapidly making an exit from today’s gaming landscape. What we’ve all known and felt for a while now, has been put into figures by Parks Associates – microtransactions and virtual goods/items are becoming the major source of revenue for a large number of games publishers/producers. Outlined in their report. “Online Gaming: Global Outlook.” Parks Associates projects a $6 billion worldwide revenue take by 2015.
“Because of increasing average Internet speeds and advances in technology, a large number of game genres are now playable online,” said Pietro Macchiarella, Research Analyst, Parks Associates. “With these new online gaming options, people are spending a larger share of their online time playing games. Playing video games currently amounts to ten percent of the time spent online by American consumers.”
And within this 10 percent of online time spent playing games, the report goes further to probe spending and buying habits. They found that 19 percent of all active U.S. gamers spend money on in-game virtual goods. Coinciding with the rise of virtual goods purchases is the subsequent demise of online gaming subscriptions, falling from 35 percent in 2008, down 7 percent to 28 percent in 2010. Upstarts, especially in the social/casual gaming field have contributed grossly to these figures; Zynga, Playdom, etc.. Parks Associates point to both traditional free-to-play firms like Nexon, as well as former subscription based firms like Turbine finding big dollars in virtual goods. What was not mentioned in the preliminary reports from the Parks Associates study is whether or not hybrid models are treated as virtual goods purchases, subscription models, or if the two were painstakingly separated.
“It is becoming increasingly difficult to justify subscription fees,” Macchiarella said. “Thanks to social games and free-to-play MMOs, both casual and hardcore players have the option of playing quality games online for free. The virtual-items model that has proven so successful in Asia is finally generating significant revenues in North America.”
If doubled revenues and 1 million+ new players weren’t enough in the good news department, Paiz also outlined f2p LotRO’s 20 percent return of former players since the conversion. The game has also seen a 300 percent increase in peak concurrency, three times the number of players online at the same time, and a 400 percent increase in total active players.
Speaking to (appropriately) 
Previously based on a subscription model, LotRO can be seen as a viable competitor to Blizzard’s king-of-the-hill MMORPG, World of Warcraft, often involving players in similar, if yet different, gameplay and quest lines, series of play. Turbine’s Lord of the Rings Online has won multiple awards, involving players in a rich adventure featuring a massive world of up-to-the-minute graphics and game mechanics. Naturally, as a former subscription based game, LoTRO also includes all the premium features that paying gamers have come to expect over recent history.
This past January, the NPD Group surveyed 19,000 online gamers and found that around 30 percent are regular WoW players, thus crowning the title king of online games (again). Around 10 percent of those surveyed indicated that they’re regular RuneScape players. According to 
Turbine, developers of some of the most frequented MMO’s on the internet including Lord of The Rings Online and the (semi-recent) free-to-play revival of their popular Dungeons and Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited, was founded in 1994, and has raised over $46 million in funding since 1998. Their initial release, Asheron’s Call was published by Microsoft in 1999. Turbine later re-acquired the publishing rights to this title.
“Our original seven day trial has been very successful so far,” says Morten Larssen, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Funcom. “But with the holiday season coming up this is the perfect time to shake up our trial offer a bit and try out something new. So everyone who downloads the trial before January 1st will be able to play the first part of the game for free, forever. We are confident that many of those taking advantage of this offer will choose to become permanent players, allowing them to experience all of what the game has to offer including all the additions and improvements introduced since launch.”
