EA “relaxed” about Star wars Old Republic prospects

We’re no closer to nailing down a firm release date for the game, but a calm and considered EA spoke confidently about its hopes and expectation for BioWare MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic in its Q1 conference call last night.

“We've got a very aggressive plan to be able to scale multiple millions of users coming into the Star Wars franchise and service this fall,” EA Games label president Frank Gibeau told investors, as transcribed by Seeking Alpha.

“We're looking at pre-order campaigns and telemetry coming in from retail as well as online to get a sense of the overall base, and it's very strong. We're pretty relaxed about what we're going to be able to achieve there.”

“We feel very bullish to be able to come into this category with a fresh offering, something that's brand new that appeals to a majority of that category. And it's a category that hasn't seen a lot of releases that fit the scale over the years and we feel like we're in a good position to pick up on a lot of latent demand.”

EA boss John Riccitiello went on to detail the level of success the game will have to achieve if it wishes to prove a solid financial investment for the company.

“What we told folks was that this is a product that it starts to make profitability about 500,000 subs. At about 1m subs, it's a business that makes good money on an ongoing basis but it doesn't feel great about the historical investment that sort of got us here,” he admitted.

“And anything north of 1m, as we approach 1.5m or 2m, starts to look like a great investment and justifies the entire purchase price of VGH stock filed in a very positive way.”

Gibeau added that he expects to give more details about the Old Republic’s launch plan in the company’s next investor briefing in October

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