SWTOR release date depends on beta feedback
EA exec Frank Gibeau has revealed that the release date for Star Wars: The Old Republic is “definitely tied” to fan reaction of the ongoing beta.
“We’re driving towards a date,” said Gibeau in an interview with CVG, “but the very issue you raised is why we’re not announcing a date yet because you want to make sure that these services can last a decade.”
EA is being very careful about avoiding what has happened with other games, and wants to ensure as smooth a launch as possible. “We don’t want to happen to us what happened to WoW and a couple of other services where in the first week there were queues trying to get on to the servers, the entire service crashed – we don’t want that to happen. So we need to nail and make sure that it’s up 24/7 and it’s high quality.
“We need to nail and make sure that it’s up 24/7 and it’s high quality.”
While Gibeau says feedback from the beta has been “so far, so good,” they are “totally focused on quality” and will not make concessions to get the game out the door.
Origin Not Required to Play The Old Republic
There has been much controversy of late surrounding EA’s new download service and storefront, Origin. It is the exclusive source for the digital download version of Star Wars: The Old Republic, and the desktop application is required to play another upcoming EA game, Battlefield 3. This has had many gamers up in arms. With EA riding do much on Origin, many were questioning whether they would be forced to use the service to get their Star Wars fix.
Luckily, the issue has been cleared up and is in fact a non-issue. Stephen Reid has confirmed on the official forums that Origin will not be required in any form to run Star Wars: The Old Republic, even the digital download version.
Star Wars: The Old Republic will not require the Origin desktop application to download, patch or play the game, regardless of whether the game was originally purchased through Origin or at a retail outlet.
However, we encourage you to go ahead and try the Origin desktop app with Star Wars: The Old Republic or other EA games. Origin streamlines game downloads, makes game updates quick, easy and seamless for players, and offers social connectivity to your gaming friends.
“High-Scale” Beta for The Old Republic to Begin Soon
Speaking during a conference call with Chicago-based William Blair & Company, an investment firm, EA CEO John Riccitiello made mention of a “high-scale beta” for Star Wars: The Old Republic to begin at the end of June. It was not clarified how this would differ from the current game testing that has been ongoing. Following this phase at the end of June, a decision would be made about the release date. When asked for comment, BioWare simply stated that “game testing is ongoing”.
Update: Stephen Reid has posted some clarification on the official forums:
Take a deep breath, everyone…
Game Testing is currently ongoing for Star Wars: The Old Republic. This isn’t news – it’s been ongoing for quite a while. At different points in the process, we have invited a number of people to test. Some of those people tested for short periods, some for longer periods.
We’ve recently transitioned into longer-term and larger-scale testing. We have more people testing the game now than ever before. We are allowing them to play for longer than ever before. We’re also continuing to invite people to test, so if you haven’t signed up for testing yet – now is a good time.
We will be allowing more and more people to test The Old Republic before launch, and that means occasionally we’ll spike in our invite numbers. It doesn’t mean everyone who’s signed up for testing is going to be invited in one block.
What we’re doing now, essentially, is similar to a ‘Closed Beta’ for other MMORPGs, but we call it Game Testing. It’s invite-only, and it’s limited in size. That gives us the most ‘bang for our buck’ in terms of getting meaningful, actionable feedback. However, we’re still ramping up, we’re getting more people in… and we’re still aiming to launch in 2011.
E3 2011: Fan Reaction to Playing SWTOR
With Star Wars: The Old Republic being on the show floor for the first time at E3 this year, numerous fans were able to come by the booth and get hands-on time with the game. EA has posted a video interviewing fans who were able to play the game and the response seems to be overwhelmingly impressive. Of course, EA isn’t going to post negative comments, but the fans in the video seem to have been skeptical at first but after playing are excited for the game. Watch the video for yourself below.
The Old Republic to be Exclusive to EA’s New ‘Origin’ Service
EA has announced a new online service today called Origin, which will provide a storefront for all EA-published games on PC and offer features similar to competing platforms such as Steam. The Origin web store is currently live with over 150 titles, and the downloadable client is available as a beta.
While Origin will offer exclusive limited editions of games such as Battlefield 3 Alice: Madness Returns, perhaps the most compelling pull towards the new service is that Star Wars: The Old Republic will be offered exclusively as a digital download through Origin.
What does this mean for the game? While Origin is the only digital download service that The Old Republic will be offered on, there will of course be standard retail boxed copies of the game as well. It has been suggested that even boxed copies of the game will work with the Origin service. However, the game will not be available for purchase from other digital retailers like Steam or Direct2Drive.
To clear up questions, Stephen Reid has posted an explanation on the official forums.
Hey everyone – well, apparently once again the online world trumps newsprint, as a story that was supposed to pop tomorrow popped up tonight! Let me give you a couple of notes on Origin.
First off: Origin is a fantastic new digital initiative from EA, and we’re pleased to confirm that Star Wars: The Old Republic will be available exclusively for digital download from Origin.
However, even though you’ll only be able to buy and download The Old Republic digitally via Origin, you will still be able to buy a retail, boxed copy of the game from your favorite retailer (and that includes online retailers who’ll ship the box to you). BioWare and EA know the value many gamers place on a cool boxed product… and we’re producing a cool boxed product. (Or maybe I should say ‘boxed products’. )
Second: it’s easy to hear an announcement like this and assume it means that we’re about to drop another bombshell or two, especially with E3 around the corner. The reality is, this sort of pre-show announcement is pretty standard PR work, so that the story can ‘breathe’ a bit before E3 news obliterates everything else.
While I will say we have some super-cool stuff coming out of E3 – some of which you’re actually going to see before E3 starts – I don’t want you to jump to conclusions just yet. Instead I’d suggest you just strap in and enjoy the ride. We know every single one of you wants to know when The Old Republic is going to launch, and I assure you, when we are ready to give you a date we’ll broadcast it loud and clear.
As I’m sure you know, we’re 100% committed to making Star Wars: The Old Republic the best quality game (and service) it can be, as you’d expect from a BioWare MMORPG set in the Star Wars universe.
I’ve said before that an announcement as big as release date will be so big, it’ll come thundering towards us and we’ll all hear it long before it arrives. That train’s coming… but so far, I’d just say we’ve laid down some early track.
You have questions, no doubt, and all of them will be answered in time. For now, sit back and enjoy E3 next week.
More will certainly be revealed at EA’s pre-E3 press conference, so make sure to tune in at 12:30pm PT this Monday.
Watch EA’s E3 Press Conference Live
Want to know what is being announced about The Old Republic as it happens at this year’s E3? Well you’re in luck, as EA has partnered with Spike TV to broadcast the entire EA press conference live on Spike TV, as well as streamed online at Gametrailers, MTV.com, and EA.com. The event will feature news about SWTOR as well as other EA titles. The details of the broadcast were released via press release:
Spike TV, the #1 network for video game programming, today announced that it is working with leading game publisher Electronic Arts Inc., (NASDAQ: ERTS) for an exclusive live, commercial-free telecast of the company’s 2011 showcase event at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), the gaming industry’s leading trade show.
Broadcasting from the Orpheum Theater in Los Angeles, Gamechangers: EA 2011 Preview, premieres live nationwide Monday, June 6 at 3:30 PM ET/12:30 PM PT.
If you’re unable to catch the event live, don’t fret, as we will have live updates as they are announced available here.
Analyst Estimates $80M in Development Costs for The Old Republic
There have been huge estimations about how much it has cost to develop The Old Republic, and while it probably isn’t $300 million, according to games industry analyst Michael Pachter, development costs could be up to $80 million.
“The contribution from the Star Wars MMO is significant. Under the terms of its deal with LucasArts, EA is required to pay a royalty, but was required to front all of the development, marketing and distribution costs, as well as the costs of building out servers for the game. We estimate that LucasArts’ share is 33% of revenues, AFTER EA recoups its investment in game development. Given that the game was in development for over four years, with an estimated 200 full-time developers working on it, we estimate that EA’s investment exceeds $80 million,” Pachter stated.
Pachter also supports EA’s claims that the game only needs 500,000 subscribers to be profitable, especially since sales of the physical game will be pure profit for EA. “”We estimate that EA will cover its direct operating costs and break even at 500,000 subscribers.”
EA Unsure on The Old Republic in 2011
Although The Old Republic is officially still penned for a ’2nd half’ 2011 release, EA is prepared for the possibility of BioWare’s highly anticipated game flipping the calendar pages into early 2012. During an investor conference call today EA noted that, “While we fully anticipate launching Star Wars: The Old Republic in Q2 or Q3, the low end of our guidance range assumes the outside possibility of a January launch.” Assuming the worst, EA’s ‘guidance range’ extends to the end of their fiscal year which concludes with the end of March, 2012.
EA has consistently been reluctant to nail down a solid release date for the upcoming MMO mentioning two reasons during the investor call today. The first being not wanting to tip their hand to the competition, and secondly, they want to gather more information from testing to provide a quality launch. I’m sure they are keen on avoiding a launch debacle, especially after seeing the disaster that was the Final Fantasy XIV launch.
This also comes with the news that another major BioWare/EA role-playing game has been confirmed to have slipped into early 2012, that game being Mass Effect 3. Perhaps we’re seeing the the fall out of the recently released Dragon Age II which received a somewhat mixed reception, where many attributed its lackluster polish to a rushed schedule.
Stephen Reid, the Senior Online Community Manager at BioWare, wanted to remind us of their projected launch window.
SWTOR Predicted To Have Over 1M Subscribers in First Year
According to Janco analyst Mike Hickey, as reported by Gamasutra, Star Wars: The Old Republic is looking to gain over 1 million subscribers within the first year of the game’s launch.
Earlier this year when discussing the game’s profitability, EA CEO John Riccitiello said that the game would be profitable with over 500,000 subscribers, and “[anything] north of a million subscribers, it’s a very profitable business.”
With over 1 million subscribers, the analyst says the game could make $161.9 million in total sales and $35 million in profits during the game’s first year.
Hickey also expects sales for the game to be far over the 1 million mark. However, to retain subscribers, “game development must be perfectly orchestrated”, noting that the EA-publisher Warhammer Online quickly fell in subscriber numbers after a strong launch. With Star Wars: The Old Republic being EA’s most costly project ever, it’s certain EA will be doing all they can to keep the game going strong.
The Old Republic Launching After July 1
In a recent media conference, EA CFO Eric Brown spoke about the details of Star Wars: The Old Republic’s launch window. Specifically, that the game probably wouldn’t launch before July 1, which is the beginning of EA’s second quarter of the fiscal year.
“So we said it’s going to launch sometime in calendar, but not within Fiscal 11. So that basically pens down between, you know, April 1st and December 31st of this calendar year. It’s also reasonable to infer that it’s not in our Q1 guidance. We gave Q1 Fiscal 11, Fiscal 12 non-gap revenue guidance, minus 39 minus 44 cents and I think it’s not unreasonable to infer that it’s not included in that 90 day period,” he said.
In addition, Brown spoke about how EA plans to move from a closed beta to an eventual open beta for the game. Read the entire transcript at Darth Hater.
