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Star Wars MMO Estimated To Cost $100M
donniebaseball23 writes "EA's BioWare is developing its first-ever MMORPG in Star Wars: The Old Republic, and the publisher is betting big that the project will be a huge success. Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter says development alone cost an estimated $80 million, with marketing and distribution adding in another $20 million. The good news is it shouldn't take much to break even. 'We estimate that EA will cover its direct operating costs and break even at 500,000 subscribers (this is exceedingly conservative, and the actual figure is probably closer to 350,000), meaning that with 1.5 million paying subscribers, EA will have 1 million profitable subs,' Pachter noted."
They're now aiming for a release late this year, but acknowledged the possibility that it could slip to January 2012. If you're curious about the current state of the gameplay, Eurogamer and Rock, Paper, Shotgun (PvE, PvP) both posted write-ups of some recent hands-on time.
Great, even more people will be camping their parent's basements.
What's the big deal? They'll be camping in their own parent's basements - not with you in yours!
You'll still have your parent's basement all to yourself.
Oh please... some of us are well adjusted adults with jobs and all, and can afford our own basement to camp in ;)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Who is going to play that? Shit, I always balk a bit at $60 for a game, but, that's at least somewhat reasonable. I don't have 100 million burning a hole in my pocket though, good luck to anyone who picks up that title. Not going to be massively multiplayer with a cost like that!
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
You say that like there are people in the world not disgruntled by EA (ex-employees and non-employees [ie: gamers])
EA has single handedly destroyed my will to game. I've been seeking out game publishers that don't treat their customers like pond scum to be able to play decent games and every time I do, EA scoops them up and infects them with viral hate goo.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Since each class supposedly has its very own storyline...
Yeah, so instead of not reading the dialog box about how your carbine soldier needs to deliver 45 wombat hides you can not read the dialog that pops up from the same NPC asking you to collect 45 wombat furs.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
www.leagueoflegends.com www.firefallthegame.com (release expected later this year). Both free 2 play. Both not EA- or Activision-owned. May not be your style, but I've met the developers of both games and was impressed by their willingness to have open two-way dialog with the gamer base. IMO, people are tired of spending $50 for a retail game, being forced to pay a subscription fee, and then finding out after a short while that the game isn't at all what was expected. Free 2 play can still offer gaming companies large profit margins while putting out quality work. A publicly traded company is always going to put the stockholder's interest in mind, not the game play experience.
What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
After Valve has proven with three titles now (L4D, L4D2, Portal 2), a spring release can still be extremely profitable.
FYI: L4D and L4D2 were both Q4 releases (November 2008/2009, respectively). They often have major sales via Steam in the springtime to boost their numbers, as well as various holidays and seasons as well. Perhaps this is where you got mixed up.
What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
The game has cinematic NPC interactions in the style of Mass Effect and Dragon Age. There are no text popups. An example of a quest in the empire has a father ask you to assassinate his politically inconvenient daughter. The interaction conveys non-verbally that he isn't very sure about his course of action. When you get to the daughter, you interact with her and at the end you can kill her or capture her. If you kill her you'll get paid, if you capture her and bring her to her father he is very happy that you didn't do as asked. In a way that is just a quest to go kill someone, but only in the same way that Lord of the Rings is a story about someone fetching a ring and throwing it into someplace.
I have some. I can mod someone for you as long as I don't post.
D'oh!