“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.
EA Talks Release Date, Profitability
In its recent earnings call, publisher Electronic Arts reiterated its goal to ship Star Wars: The Old Republic during their fiscal year 2012, which begins after April 1. It was already suspected that this this was the case. EA slates the game for before the end of the calendar year 2011.
In addition, EA CEO John Riccitiello answered investor questions and discussed the game’s position in the market. One interesting point is that the game will reportedly be profitable with anything more than 500,000 subscribers, and any amount higher than 1 million subscribers would be “very profitable” according to the CEO.
EA CFO Eric Brown also noted that “EA is incurring significant development costs for the Star Wars MMO.” This aligns with reports that game was costing the company $300 million. However, Riccitiello also noted to not believe anything that is coming out of “gamer blogs”, most likely hearkening back to EA Louse.
“One is there’s been a fair amount of talk on various blogs, describing spends that are vastly higher than anything we’ve ever put in place,” Riccitiello said. “So don’t read gamer blogs as having any substance. Some of them bring a chuckle but they also bring a frustration for those that are being responsible in the management of EA’s R&D dollars when they read sort of falsehoods out in the press.”
EA is betting quite a bit on this game’s success, but perhaps not as much as some would have you believe.
Official Target Release Revealed
EA CEO John Riccitello announced today that TOR will not be coming out in the 2011 fiscal year. Now for those of you who don’t know, all two of you, the fiscal year of 2011 for EA ends on March 31st, 2011. This goes along with earlier predictions that the game wouldn’t ship until at least April 2011.
Star Wars: The Old Republic Hitting Shelves Spring 2011? [UPDATE]
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:
While we have not announced a specific date, we can confirm that we are targeting a spring 2011 release for Star Wars™: The Old Republic™. We’ve got a lot of exciting updates and reveals planned throughout 2010, including the first-ever hands-on testing for the game. It’s not too late to sign up to be a game tester, so go to www.swtor.com/tester and sign up today. We can’t wait to share more about the game with you as we progress through the year, so make sure you stay tuned to the official website for details.
Whoops! EA retracts CEO Riccitiello’s statement on TOR’s payment model
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.
SWTOR to be Microtransaction based
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.”
