EA Risking Big with The Old Republic
By Kyle Mann | December 21, 2011 | News | No comments | Share
The Old Republic MMO is now live, offering gamers a more action-packed approach to Star Wars roleplaying than the recently deceased Galaxies. And while the game is sure to take off with a lot of momentum, MMOs with more hype have come and gone in a flash against the monster that is World of Warcraft. EA’s betting a lot on The Old Republic horse, but just how much has the games publisher sunk into its development and marketing?
According to analyst Colin Sebastian, the number may be north of $300,000,000, while other analysts place the number between $100,000,000 and $300,000,000. Though that’s a ton of cash to sink into an MMO, EA need retain “only” 500,000 subscribers in order to turn a profit on the game. What’s good news for EA is analyst Arvind Bhatia’s report that the game will sell roughly 3,000,000 copies with 1,500,000 subscribers by the end of the year. But Bhatia also states that EA’s 2012 earnings report relies on The Old Republic heavily, so much so that a failed launch would mean up to 20% reduction in revenue.
On the bright side, analyst Doug Creutz estimates The Old Republic to already have those 1.5 million subscribers, momentum that’s sure to help EA’s chances at success. MMOs are a fickle thing though, and should any possible negative word of mouth start to spread like wildfire through the gaming community, that subscriber base could begin rapidly shrinking. But if the game is as quality as BioWare and EA would have us believe, the initial rush of players can be nothing but good news for EA’s financials.
