Speaking in an update call concerning their 2010 fiscal year, Shacknews reports that Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello said that their next “major MMO” was coming along for a Spring 2011 release, leading many to believe he was speaking about Star Wars: The Old Republic, with no other known major MMO projects on EA’s plate.

“One key driver is going to be the launch date of our major MMO. As it stands today, the game is making great progress towards a Spring 2011 launch. But given the volatility of this particular sector and the fact that we haven’t yet provided a specific launch date, at least for now, we’re excluding the revenue, or will be excluding the revenue, from our FY11 plans.”

Spring 2011 is later than many had anticipated for this game, and will possibly give the game over a 5 year development cycle if it follows that schedule. We’ve contacted LucasArts and BioWare to see if they have any comment or can confirm that the comment was made about The Old Republic, and will update this post if we hear back.

UPDATE: Sean Dahlberg has responded on the official forums, confirming the report:

In an update to a previous news post, Electronic Arts has said CEO John Riccitiello’s statement on The Old Republic’s business model was based on a ‘misunderstanding’. Riccitiello had originally commented that TOR will be ‘microtransaction-based’, which is quite different from the traditional MMO payment model based around monthly payments.

It’s surprising that Riccitiello would make such an obviously important statement without checking with the rest of the EA brass. Most of the speculation as to why usually attributes it to just another way TOR is going to stand out from the rest of the MMO crowd and that makes sense, given how much attention BioWare has given to the story and the characters. But for now, it seems that fans will be left to speculate on just how much they’ll have to pay until February, when this issue is hopefully cleared up.

Read the updated Shacknews post here.

ShackNews has reported that Star Wars: The Old Republic will feature an uncommon form of payment. Instead of being subscription-based like most MMOs are, paying a flat rate each month, EA has classified The Old Republic as a “microtransaction-based” title.

EA CEO John Riccitiello spoke on the matter today. “We are continuing to stick to the plan relative to building out our direct-to-consumer models which include microtransactions and subscriptions… The recent launch of Warhammer is a great example of that.”

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