Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia recently visited EA to check in on the progress of the company's upcoming, cutscene-driven MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic. He reported that "earnings are somewhat depressed" due to the development costs for the game, but EA management is hopeful that they'll recoup this cash when the title brings in over two million subscribers. He added that, at the very least, the game needs over one million players in order for EA to break even.
We think they might be setting the bar a little too high for themselves. Why not make the monthly subscription fee cost $20,000, and then just hope that 500 outrageously wealthy, rabid Star Wars fans hop on board? There have got to be at least 500 successful venture capitalists out there who own a baker's dozen of collectible Millennium Falcon models.
Reader Comments (52)
Posted: Mar 19th 2010 12:17PM ipponrg said
Kinda hesitant on this even though it's Star Wars. I dislike paying to beta test a game. Because of that, I left Warhammer Online after 3 months. The market now for MMOs is pretty saturated and the only thing Bioware/EA has is the Star Wars branding to this. They should take the time to polish the game up (which it seems like they're doing considering they've been pushing this game back constantly), so it's not seen as being rushed to the market .
Posted: May 1st 2010 2:26PM (Unverified) said
I would love to see them get 2 million initial sale, I bet they keep only 500k after the first month and if they are lucky they have 250k 6 months later.
They still have no clue, hyping mmo's is not the way to go.
If anyone is interested in mmorpg subscription nubers, check out www.mmodata.net
They still have no clue, hyping mmo's is not the way to go.
If anyone is interested in mmorpg subscription nubers, check out www.mmodata.net
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