Report - 39 million MMO gamers in the US play SciFi, 68% prefer F2P

Newzoo has found that 36% or 14 million of 39 million active MMO gamers in the US play games that have a SciFi or Space theme, while in European and emerging markets, SciFi is less popular with 27% (9.5 million) and 26% (11.5 million) of all MMO gamers playing the genre.

According to its 2011 MMO Games Market Report, the firm also found that MMOs, compared to 16% who prefer pay-to-play. The remaining 16% play both, but the number of SCiFi MMO gamers spending money in F2P MMO games outnumbers the 4.5 million P2P gamers.

With SciFi MMOs, 38% or 41 million players in China and South Korea play the space genre, and 53% of those choose the P2P versions. However, they also play F2P MMOs, illustrating the rise of the business model in Asia.

In emerging markets such as Brazil, Mexico and Russia, 80% of all SciFi MMO gamers only play F2P, while in Europe, the UK is the largest SciFi MMO market with 2.7 million, with Germany alone claiming 1.7 million SciFi gamers.

"You will not catch me making any predictions about StarWars: the Old Republic," said Newzoo CEO Peter Warman. "But I am very curious to see how much F2P SciFi gamers EA will be able to convert to P2P gamers and what part will come from outside the current pool of SciFi gamers, being complete newcomers as well as the subscribers to EveOnline, WoW, Rift or any other triple A P2P MMO game.

"With big F2P SciFi titles also scheduled to launch pretty soon, I expect to see significant differences in uptake of the various SciFi titles in US, Europe and Emerging markets.”

Two other SciFi MMOs coming to market, include the F2P Transformers Universe and Stellar Dawn.