Sony London studio director Dave Ranyard has told the Develop Conference in Brighton today that SingStar has added some 1.5 million players since making the transition to the free-to-play model last October Gamasutra reports.
This compares to 2 million players who took up the series over its first five years as a paid franchise.
About six per cent of those who have used the SingStar app go on to purchase premium songs with a "handful" of users to date downloading over 1,000 tracks.
"If free-to-play was relevant [nine years ago], this would have been our business to start with," Ranyard said.
He was keen to stress that moving to free-to-play isn't the only change SingStar has undergone with the number of menus players must wade through before playing a song reduced from six or seven to two or three. In addition, support for a broader range of USB microphones has also been integrated meaning players no longer need to use Sony's official peripherals.
Ranyard says the changes have been made as a means to reduce the barriers to entry.
Also at Develop, Microsoft revealed that its Lift Studio in London is developing four free-to-play new-IPs for connected devices.
It seems likely that free-to-play will be a prominent game-type on both the PS4 and the Xbox One. Despite charging for multiplayer on PS4 free-to-play games will not be curtained off behind PlayStation Plus' paywall; at present, free-to-play games require an Xbox Live Gold account to access and Microsoft has given no indication that this will change with Xbox One.
