EA: Old Republic will be delayed, will make money with 500,000 subs

EA determined Bioware's first MMO will be a success

EA has announced in their latest quarterly fiscal report that Bioware's new MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic will indeed be delayed into the next financial year.

EA boss John Riccitiello also defended the project over rumours that the game was running up unprecedented development costs. He said that the game would be able to reach profitability with half a million subscribers.

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

EA CFO Eric Brown added on the rumours of the cost of development of The Old Republic: "There's been a fair amount of talk on various blogs, describing spends that are vastly higher than anything we've ever put in place. Some of them, they bring a chuckle but they also bring a frustration for those that are being responsible in the management of EA's R and D dollars when they read sort of falsehoods out of the press."

Thanks GamesIndustry.biz.

By Ewan Aiton