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.

EA Games label president Frank Gibeau has recently answered some questions about The Old Republic, including how the game will work alongside Warhammer Online.

“Well, as much as Need for Speed is a competitor for FIFA,” he said. “They compete in the same genre of videogames but they’re very diverse customer bases. The Warhammer customer base will overlap to a degree with Star Wars, but obviously you’re bringing in millions of new customers with the Star Wars universe.”

He is also confident about some players even playing both games. Read more»

EA and LucasArts are aiming to take on World of Warcraft with BioWare’s newly announced MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Speaking to Videogaming247, EA Games’ president, Frank Gibeau, spoke of the company’s ambition to use the Star Wars IP to build up a user base to overtake that of Blizzard’s.

“We have very high expectations for this,” Gibeau explained. “Just look at the base of Star Wars fans, plus what BioWare can do. Trust me: we want to win. EA’s reputation is for wanting to win.”

“This is going to be a powerful category and there’s lots of ways to compete in this category. [Blizzard] created a much larger opportunity for everybody else, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to stay that way.”

LucasArts’ Tom Nichols agreed, adding: “When World of Warcraft came out, everybody thought, ‘No, the market is only this big, because that’s as big as EverQuest was.’ Blizzard showed that it could be much larger.”

“Our goal is to show that by bringing storytelling to the genre that we can attract an even wider audience. Plus, we have the benefit of this huge brand, which has done very, very well for nearly 30 years.”

When asked specifically if the game would be bigger than World of Warcraft, Nichols said: “I think this game has that potential.”

EA Games president Frank Gibeau said Wednesday that a prime focus for the firm was to push into the online space with all available speed.

“It is an absolute imperative for the company to go online as fast as possible, and the more projects we can do that have scale and quality the better,” the exec told VG247 in San Francisco. Read more»

Electronic Arts exec Frank Gibeau has confirmed that console versions of Star Wars: The Old Republic and Warhammer Online are “under consideration”.

Speaking to Eurogamer at the press event announcing SWTOR for PC, he said, “We’re definitely looking at the opportunity to bring the MMO experience to console, without question.”