As announced back in June of 2007 SOE’s action packed Spy MMO The Agency is now being considered as a Free 2 Play title with a micro-transaction model allowing players to purchase in-game upgrades with real money instead.

At this week’s Leipzig Games Convention, the president of Sony Online Entertainment John Smedley held a talk on “Subscriptions vs Micro-transactions” in regards to MMO games. During the briefing, he indicated that Sony was looking at making their upcoming pc/ps3 spy-themed MMO a free play title, meaning there would be no subscription fee (unlike World of Warcraft). Instead, SOE would fund the title via micro-transactions and a ‘velvet-rope policy’ where certain area are only available if people pay for access.

Smedley acknowledged that consumers are used to the subscription based model (as is SOE, considering their long history of subscription based MMOs), but said that they “believe very strongly that this is the future of MMO gaming, but we also know that it is something that players have an issue with… There’s going to be an aftermarket, and we want to control it so that players don’t get duped into having something switched out from them.”

With increasing competition from larger MMORPG’s that are likely to give more bang for the buck than an action oriented MMO, this could very one of the smartest plays Smedley can make for The Agency.

While MMO gamers may want to try out a totally different MMO, it’s more likely they’d like to play one like The Agency while subscribed to a more traditional game like WoW. By keeping the barrier down with micro-transactions SOE can enable gamers to remain subscribed to another MMO while still playing and paying incrementally as they play The Agency on the side.

They’ve also got the PS3 console players to keep in mind for the Agency port that are even less likely to accept any type of monthly subscription.

The only question remaining will be just how hard will we get hit by the micro-transaction fee’s in comparison to a subscription MMO?

Source: PS3 Fanboy