EA To Earn At Least £60m A Year From Star Wars MMO

02 Feb 2011 at 13:30:49 by Dave Gibbon

Electronic Arts has revealed it could make £60 million per annum if just 500,000 people subscribed to its BioWare-developed MMO Star Wars: Old Republic.

Speaking to investors following the announcement of its Q3 results, CEO John Riccitiello said the title will need just 500,000 subscribers to become profitable.

"500,000 subscribers saw the game is substantially profitable but it's not the kind of thing that we would write home about," he said. "Anything north of 1m subscribers is a very profitable business.

"So it's our view that we can be very successful without fundamentally challenging the market leader [World of Warcraft] because we think we'll probably hit the smaller competitors harder when we get out there. Of course, we have no particular ambition to be a distant number two. Our ambitions are higher than that, but we throttle back a little bit relative to our financial projections."

Assuming a monthly subscription was £10, a 500,000 subscriber base would lead to £60 million a year in generated income.

EA’s Star Wars: Old Republic will not now launch this Spring, with the publisher saying it will now be released anytime between this April and next.

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