Is there room for 2 incredibly powerful MMO’s on the market, can Star Wars: The old republic out shine World of Warcraft where every other MMO has failed to be #1? Maybe… It might be too late though, with WoW already being as big as it is. But we’ve seen game play after game play in anticipation for Sw:Tor to shine brightly in our hands making us the rulers of our own destiny with a lightsaber or Two. If Tor cannot succeed in drawing you in as promised with it’s epic story telling than we might see millions of dollars and hours just thrown away, but I’ve always had faith in the Bioware franchise ever since Balder’s Gate pretty much the only thing I do have faith in. “So where does that leave EA and BioWare Austin? Possibly up a creek given how much money has reportedly been poured into…
business model
EA: Old Republic will have ten-year lifespan
Speaking at the UBS Annual Media and Communications Conference in New York, EA CFO Eric Brown confirmed that SWTOR will use the monthly subscription business model. He also predicted a ten-year lifespan for the game: “Our assumptions for break-even and profitability are not seven-digit subscribers. We think we can run and operate a very successful and profitable MMO at different levels… The key thing here is to really perfect the product. We’re shooting for an extremely high quality game experience. We view this as a ten-year opportunity.” It was also mentioned that SWTOR “…will generate revenue through monthly subscriptions” With such a highly anticipated title on their hands, it is very surprising to hear EA more or less undercut their projections. Obviously not wanting to fail under the feet of the World of Warcraft juggernaut, the publisher thought it better to keep their sales projections reasonable and instead hope the…
Gamespot interview with Dr. Ray Muzyka
Gamespot had the chance to do an interview with BioWare’s Ray Muzyka at this years EA Winter Showcase. The interview is mostly about how the game is shaping up, but there is an interesting part about the recent announcement on EA being named the sole publisher of the game. Aparently this haven’t changed the development process of the game, and with EA focusing on worldwide publishing, Lucasarts can concentrate on adding ideas to the game and help out with the marketing end of it.
EA and LucasArts Enter Into New Global Publishing Agreement for Star Wars: The Old Republic
In what amounts to a bit of publisher houscleaning, Electronic Arts has announced that it has entered into a new agreement with LucasArts that basically has EA taking over most of the publishing and marketing duties for the upcoming MMO Star Wars The Old Republic. Under the new agreement, LucasArts will continue to collaborate with EA and the game’s developer BioWare on the “design and marketing” for the game in addition to LucasArts’ basic role as the licensor of the Star Wars property itself. Financial terms of this new deal were not disclosed. BioWare and LucasArts first entered into an agreement to collaborate on Star Wars The Old Republic back in 2007 before the game itself was announced and just before BioWare was acquired by EA. The game itself was announced in October 2008. EA and Lucasfilm Ltd, announced today an updated global publishing agreement for the highly anticipated massively multiplayer…
Bigpoint CEO claims SWTOR won’t be profitable
Bigpoint is one of the Biggest Publishers for F2P and Browser Games and CEO Heiko Hubertz recently stated that he believes that Star Wars – The Old Republic will never be profitable with it’s current financial concept. “If you look in the traditional industry there are still a lot of big bets there,” said Hubertz, keynoting the London Games Conference this evening. “Still there are companies investing $20-40 million for a game. These companies have to be profitable after one or two months. They don’t have 12 months or even more. I think these companies are really in trouble in the future if a user can play online games for free. “If you look at a game like Star Wars from EA and BioWare, they estimated a development budget of more than $100 million. This is an online game for many million of subscribers, so a big publisher does not…