We know that EA will not be pocketing all of the profit from SWTOR, which looks to be a very successful game but has also been quite a large investment. They will have to share with Lucas Arts, who owns rights to the Star Wars name. some have said that EA may not have much to gain in the way of profit from the deal but one analyst said there is plenty to go around. (Isn’t this what I just said yesterday?)
According to Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter, LucasArts will take “around 35 per cent” of the revenue from forthcoming SWTOR MMO after EA earns back its investment in the game.
“I think [EA] will make a profit,” said Pachter, who has proven to be right on these types of things in the past. He adds:
“The revenue split is around 35 per cent to LucasArts after EA earns back their investment. That means EA keeps most of the revenue from disc sales (they have marketing expenses and need to staff up the server farms), so they should earn a nice profit there.
Keep in mind that EA expensed the development cost when incurred, so much of the disc sales revenue will be profit.”
Pachter had estimated that SWTOR will bring in about 1.5 million subscribers which would be around $80M annually in profits. He also said that the game will only need 500,000 subscribers to see a profit, something that is apparent will happen, at least from the start and launch. So the real question will lie in whether or not EA/Bioware can keep the gamers happy over time after drawing them in for a successful launch.
