Star Wars MMO Business Model

BioWare’s Star Wars: The Old Republic will earn money from micro-transactions rather than subscriptions according to EA honcho, John Riccitiello.

EA has since responded to comments made by Riccitiello saying “no statements have been made about the Star Wars business model,” claiming that Riccitiello’s comments were derived from a “misunderstanding” according to reports from Shacknews.

"We are continuing to stick to the plan relative to building out our direct-to-consumer models which include microtransactions and subscriptions," citing Warhammer Online as a great example.

The discussion of monotising the game isn’t a new one, but it’s something that BioWare and EA were discussing behind closed doors.  Nothing had been confirmed about how the game was going to make money or whether subscription or micro-transactions (a pay-as-you-play-system) would be employed.  That was until yesterday.

"Other initiatives we've announced, for example [the] Star Wars online MMO, are mid-session games which are microtransaction-based," said Riccitiello. "You'll be hearing more about those in the February [conference] call."

With no further information, not even a released date, we’ll all be waiting for that February conference call in anticipation.