EA took time out of its busy schedule today to announce that the community of players enjoying their free-to-play browser-based games has reached 25 million players.

The company, admittedly, has done quite well for themselves in the free-to-play business in recent years with the launch of Battlefield Heroes and Need for Speed World, both of which have reached 10 million registered users earlier this month. Their other not so popular games including Battlefield Play4Free, Dragon Age Legends, Battleforge and Lord of Ultima have brought the total number of players to that magical 25 million number that they are boasting today.

To celebrate, EA has decided to give something back to the community playing their most popular freemium games. For Battlefield Heroes players, they can redeem the code EQ9M-TYYT-TXR3-5GU3 for 300 Battlefunds, the in-game currency that can be used to purchase in-game weapons, vanity items (i.e. hats) and more.

The same promotion is available for Need For Speed World, players can enter in the code EWPD-3KGA-VBVF-9HYS for 750 SpeedBost, the differently named but still the same in-game currency that can be used for the purchase of new cars, performance upgrades and more.

Those codes had better be used quickly though as they expire on January 17. After that, it’s back to paying real money for that in-game currency. I’m sure EA would appreciate your continued patronage.

“Developing a community of 25 million players is a remarkable achievement. It is a testament to the explosive growth of the free-to-play market and a reflection of EA’s commitment to spearheading the digital transformation. We plan to continue to innovate in the category, introduce new gameplay that delights players and keeps them coming back for more,” Sean Decker, Play4Free, Vice President, said. “For our teams, this is an incredibly exciting time to be making games as the audience continues to grow and diversify.”

Since the launch of Battlefield Heroes, EA has found that 8 billion bullets have been fired with nearly 532 million in-game kills. Those numbers clearly indicating that players have terrible accuracy or they just like wasting bullets.

For those who prefer exotic cars over exotic cartoon soldiers, Need For Speed World is releasing a series of new cars starting with the 2012 Porsche 911 Carrera S that went live on January 10.

EA also announced in December that their newest freemium title would be adapting the popular strategy series into a browser-based strategy MMO in the form of Command and Conquer Tiberium Alliances. Chances are it will be better than Command and Conquer 4.

How do you feel about free-to-play games? Are they the new “it” thing that EA makes them out to be? Do you play any of them? Let us know in the comments.

Analytics company Flurry has just come out with some stats that suggest it’s more profitable for mobile game developers to charge nothing for their app. Flurry says that the “freemium” model has well overtaken the “premium” paid model in terms of generated revenue in the last few months.

They looked at the top 100 grossing games in the iPhone App Store from January of 2011 and then again in June. They explain that the term “freemium” simply means any game that is free to download but offers paid items to the subscriber while “premium” means charging anything for your app – whether it be $0.99 or $7.99.

What they found was that 65% of the revenue generated by the U.S. App Store top 100 games were from freemium games. That figure is up from just 39% in January.

How can this be, you might ask? According to Flurry, it’s all about hooking the heavy spenders. The metric of success (and in turn revenue) for traditional games is with units sold x unit price. That’s not the case with mobile games. For free games, it’s about how many people you can get hooked, who will therefore want to spend money on in-game purchases. This could be virtual currency, virtual goods, expansion packs or other items.

Flurry data shows that the number of people who spend money in a free game ranges from 0.5% to 6% depending on the quality of the game and its core mechanics. Although this means that more than 90% of players will not spend a single penny, it also means that players who love your game spend much more than the $0.99 you were considering charging for the app. And since you gave away the game for free, your “heavy spender” group can be sizable.

Take for instance a random iOS game called Gun Bros. The game itself is free, but the top in-app purchases are “war buck” packages that can run the player anywhere from $1.99 to $99.99.

Will more app developers shift toward the freemium model in the future? With the obvious success and massive opportunities, I don’t see why not.

Here are my thoughts on how to go about charging (gasp!) money for your software:

7 Pithy Insights On How Not To Give Your Software Away For Free

1.  Design for Dollars:  If you are hoping to charge for your software someday, it helps to actually design it from the beginning with this goal in mind.  As you are building the product, try and think about how you might build it so that someone, someday will actually pay you money for it.  Trust me, it helps.  [Note:  Apologies for the reference to dollars (vs. rupees, Euros or something else).  The poet in me likes the alliteration and I happen to reside in the U.S.)

2.  Resist Guilt:  This is a tough one.  Many software people find it hard to rationalize in their heads that they can actually charge money for their product.  Though I’m a big fan of free (as in beer) software myself, the reality is that not all businesses can afford to do this.  There’s nothing inherently wrong for charging for a product that costs you money and talent to build.  If doctors, lawyers and architects can charge for delivering something of value, why not you?  The key is point #1 — build something people are willing to pay for.

3.  Charge Early:  Try and find a way to start charging for the software as early in your development process as possible.  This can get a bit tricky in the early days, but it is worth the effort.  The key here is to build something of value as early in the process as possible and then to amplify that value by throwing your personal passion into it.  For example, at my startup HubSpot, we’re still in beta but have been bringing on paying customers for months.  Rather than being embarased that the software is so early, we make up for it by fanatical support for our early customers — and letting them help drive the product development.

4.  Charge Often:  Avoid trying to lock your customers in to some long-term contract.  I’m a big fan of monthly agreements.  If you are charging your customers monthly (instead of a big up-front fee), the burden is on you to "earn" your customer’s business every month — or they leave.  Keeping your customers happy is your problem not theirs. 

5.  Let Them Try Before They Buy:  This one is obvious.  Minimize buyer’s remorse by letting customers try out your offering before making a large committment. 

6.  Ease Adoption:  Reduce the "time to enjoyment" for the customer. Help them get immediate benefit and enjoyment.  We live in a fast-paced world.  If it takes your customers days or weeks to get even marginal enjoyment from your product, you’re going to have a hard time charging for it.  Make it simpler and make adoption easier. 

7.  Make Your Customers Smarter:  This is a bit of a weird one.  When you’re charging your customers, remember that not all of your value is delivered through the software — a lot of value can be through the experience of dealing with you.  Customers want to learn and grow.  They want to improve their lives and/or businesses.  When buying from you, customers want some direct benefit from your product (basically, the ones you promised), but they also want to feel like they got something out of the relationship.  Seek ways to help your customers get smarter in whatever area of expertise you have.

Those are my thoughts.  If you have any additional insights on ways to make it easier to charge (gasp!) money for your software please share them in the comments.

Comments

Now let’s segue from there to another reason why freemium really makes sense. Erik Keller at SandHill writes:

“Now this approach may be seen as foolhardy by those who believe that products are always sold rather than just bought. This assertion, however, must be reexamined in the light of rampant license-fee discounting as well as the fact that [a typical enterprise software company] spends over 90 percent of its license fee revenue on sales and marketing expenses. The reality in enterprise software is while most companies do not give away their software, they might as well, given the cost of sales as well as market conditions.” (emphasis added)

I had to reread that paragraph a couple of times to really grok it, but Erik is spot-on: many companies could, arguably, eliminate their “traditional” sales and marketing expenditures, give their products away for free, and still do just about the same on the bottom line.

Put another way…what if your company could turn its sales model on its head, and respond to customer pull, versus selling and marketing via “push?”

(Bonus quote from Erik, from the same article: “When a value-oriented buyer’s point of view is taken, the core of this inefficiency becomes obvious. From an income-statement perspective, the cost of delivering a product and service as well as R&D are customer value-adds: buyers get something direct and of value from these costs. On the other hand, sales and marketing as well as general & administrative expenses are seen as valueless to the buyer. They represent the overhead that a vendor needs to engage the market.”)

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Christopher Carfi, CEO and co-founder of Cerado, looks at sales, marketing, and the business experience from the customers point of view. He currently is focused on understanding how emerging social technologies such as blogs, wikis, and social networking are enabling the creation of new types of customer-driven communities. He is the author of the Social Customer Manifesto weblog, and has been occasionally told that he drives and snowboards just a little too quickly.