Yep, I can second that. Looks like most browser games get most of their revenue from premium features/items whatever.

At least I guess we're talking about browser games? Because if web-based includes MMOs then of course it's different. (well a lot of those are freemiums too, but many aren't).

Oh and I myself have once paid for premium features on tribal wars and paid for my friends too, so make sure it's easy to buy stuff for other people, they like doing that :-)

Good point RE: MMOs, I wasn't thinking about them as a separate category. Why do you think it's easier for them to pull off a freemium/subscription model?

Gifting is interesting, I first noticed it with reddit. If you don't mind me asking, why did you pay for your friends on Tribal Wars?

Well an MMO on average provides far far more content, it's simply a more intense and complete gaming experience. It's more unique. At least it used to be. MMOs are definitely slowly shifting away from the subscription model to the freemium one (some start experiment with ads but I don't think there's anything significant so far). The shift is obviously because there's more MMOs, they loose their uniqueness factor and it's so much cheaper to develop and then maintain them. Nowadays if you want to make a significant subscription based MMO it would have to be really cutting edge or very niche (check out WW II online, but keep in mind it's not a financial success, they can just support themselves).

Why did I pay for my friends? Well some were not even friends. I was basically a leader of a "tribe" there and made an "invitation contest" (every member could invite people to the tribe, top 3 inviters would get the "premium points from me". But let's be honest, the true underlying reason is "oh look how cool I am, I gave you a gift", in fact that little contest of mine was somewhat a scam, I made sure the right people won :-)

But generally speaking browser games and MMOs are very different in almost all aspects. Revenue models might be getting similar but everything else is fundamentally different. I guess that doesn't need explanation.

As for the money making potential I think MMO market is definitely over-saturated, competition is very fierce and barriers to entry big.

Web browser market is very saturated too, but mainly with low quality stuff, as in it's no sooo hard to build something better. But the downside is that most games really struggle with profits there.

Cool, thanks for the link! I've noticed that a few sites align their premium with being able to play more. Chess.com is a service that I started paying for because I wanted to get past the rate limit and they had a lot of neat-looking members-only things.