The original PlanetSide is going free-to-play

Sony Online Entertainment CEO John Smedley has confirmed that the original PlanetSide, first released in 2003, will soon switch over to the free-to-play model. The massively-multiplayer online first-person-shooter currently requires a monthly subscription to play -- however, Smedley took to Twitter last night to reveal that the game will soon follow the monetization model of its 2012 sequel. Some players are already able to play the game for free, as SOE has sent out free time passes to anyone who has played the game before, or who has played PlanetSide 2. "We weren't ready to announce it yet because the database grant is still ongoing and won't be done till tommorrow morning," said Smedley, referring to the move to grant all current PlanetSide players with a free pass. He says that this free time will give the studio more time to move the game over to the free-to-play model. Although we have no idea of how many subscribers the original PlanetSide current has, at last count in 2007, it was estimated to be around 20,000 subs. The game hit its peak in 2003 when it had around 60,000 subscribers. Smedley originally revealed that PlanetSide 2 would be adopting the free-to-play model back in 2011.