Giving Players a Choice: Planetside 1 Will Go F2P Soon

The upcoming MMOFPS Planetside 2 has a lot of hype and a lot of fans behind it. But John Smedley, the CEO of Sony Online Entertainment hasn't forgotten about Planetside 1 just yet.

In a twitter post concerning Planetside 1, Smedley mentions that "we will keep it running and it will go F2P sometime fairly soon. While admittedly a large portion of the playerbase for Planetside 1 will be moving to Planetside 2 it is nice to see players given choices.

It's only fair to give Planetside 1 players the same payment options that Planetside 2 will have. There are huge fundamental differences between the two versions besides the obvious improvements to graphics and combat. Some players will of course be more content with the current state of Planetside 1 versus the currently unfinished Planetside 2.

This may also bring in a slightly larger playerbase to the original. Those that do not have the computer power to run the resource demanding Planetside 2 will find that the original requires only a fraction of the resources to run. No word yet as to when exactly the switch to F2P will take place but given the fact that updates to Planetside 2 are coming at a breakneck speed, one could expect the switch to occur before Planetside 2 is released later this year.