Pieced together on a fairly hefty budget, the top dogs at BioWare and EA no doubt had their fingers crossed when The Old Republic finally launched just before Christmas. However, according to recent sales figures, the publisher and its renowned studio have surpassed expectations, the Star Wars MMO fetching $344m, resulting in a total net loss of $205m.
It has been reported that 2,000,000 copies of the game have been purchased, The Old Republic currently harbouring 1.7m active players (1 million concurrent.) Other statistics sourced from EA’s Q3 FY12 earnings call also highlighted that 40% of the total copies sold were purchased via EA’s digital service, Origin. During the game’s first month and a half in circulation it has also also been said that the average player session time lasted for four hours.
EA is planning on increasing the MMO’s marketing budget with BioWare promising a flow of substantive in-game content.
Source: Massively, Darth Hater
Kite
Me waits for Guild Wars 2.
I don’t like paying subscription for single player games.
samiro05
An overall net loss?
mad_mac_hl
I was wondering about that too – typo??
Regardless, I’m sure there’s something dodgy in those figures. 2m copies sold at rrp $60 is only £120m. First months play is free. They’re only into their second month online so if all 2m copies have purchase an extra month at $30, that’s still only £180m.
Of course there’s those pesky Star Wars fans – I wonder just how many of them went all out for the stupidly expensive collectors edition :s
maneorix
They probably have a long term target. It’s an MMO after all, even with the server costs, regular updates to spend cash on, they should make more than enough money to gain a profit.
afrogeez
I read somewhere that the 1.7 million figure is from December, i doubt it’s that high now.
The Lone Steven
I’m glad that it’s done so well as story driven MMOs seem to be rare. I’ve yet to see a single ad for SW:TOR. I have to admit, i’m pretty interested in it and could see myself picking it up if my laptop could run it and if i could afford the monthly fee. I think i would not be trusted as i may be very tempted by the power of the Dark Side. They have a better dental plan.
Kled
We’ll see next month.
Free month just finished.
MayContainEvil
Glad to see it did well at launch, now just have to see if the subs stay…