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Star Wars: The Old Republic’ loses 400,000 EA plans to release two expansions 3months


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The Force is, well, a little tepid with Star Wars: The Old Republic.

 

Electronic Arts' much ballyhooed massively-multiplayer game set in George Lucas's celebrated universe is bleeding customers, losing some 400,000 in the fourth quarter -- a number much worse than anyone was expecting.

 

The news has sent EA stock plunging to a level it hasn't seen since 1999, but company executives tried to downplay the numbers in an earnings call with analysts Monday, saying the exodus was tied to casual and trial players canceling their subscriptions.

 

"For the most part, we're seeing very good retention amongst core MMO users, which has given us a solid base of around 1.3 million subscribers," said Frank Gibeau, president of the EA Games label. "So the percentage of paying subscribers from our peak until now has actually gone up, and the folks that we have are as engaged as they were when they first bought the product."

 

To try and give the game a boost, EA plans to release not one, but two expansions in the next three months, bringing more content to the game, including player versus player content, additional achievements and a greater focus on guilds.

 

EA had big hopes for The Old Republic when the game launched in late December of 2011. The company poured a good $200 million into the title, more than any game in its history. At the time, the idea was to steal a significant percentage of the audience that happily gave World of Warcraft $15 per month to play. (Of course, in the interim, WoW's audience began to shrink rapidly as well.)

 

But judging by comments from EA's CEO, the game has slipped from favor somewhat.

 

"Where that puts [the game] in our portfolio is, in terms of profitability from a franchise, is in our top 10 but it's not in our top 5," said John Riccitiello. "So it's a business contributor, while important, is not as important as Medal of Honor or Battlefield or FIFA or Madden or The Sims or SimCity, but it's more important than Tiger Woods PGA Golf

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how ever you cut it, this doesnt bode well for swtor. but this is a rapidly changing environment. many people have the attention span of a gnat. depending on what cantent is released, many may flock back to the awesomeness that is swtor.

 

if i could subscribe for life, i would.

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Expansions have always meant bigger additions to the core game that you buy with additional fee. Content patches are that - bigger patches that are free and add some new module to the game, as well as of course tons of fixes.

 

I wasn't saying you wrote that post yourself or that it was your 'fault', I'm saying whoever wrote it (be it even EA rep) is clearly a moron and doesn't know the common terminology at all.

Edited by Kauhu
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It was clarified (you can find it in the dev tracker) that they were referring to major content patches, not boxed expansions.

 

LOL, if they were really trying to kill the game expacks would be the way.. I couldn't imagine the grief that would ensue had the players needed to pay for them.

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Hey OP, this thread is redundant.

 

Before cutting and pasting things that fit your personal agenda and getting people needlessly worked up, MAYBE check existing threads. like this one for example, where everything has been discussed and cooked six ways to Sunday. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=448029

 

As for expansions..... it was quickly clarified by Allison in a Dev response here: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=4287006#edit4287006

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LOL, if they were really trying to kill the game expacks would be the way.. I couldn't imagine the grief that would ensue had the players needed to pay for them.

 

Other MMOs have sold expansion content for quite a long time now while only having a few hundred thousand subs. What would be the big surprise? Are you referring to if they tried to pull something off like releasing two boxed expansions within the year? Then yes, that would be a surefire way to make people walk away.

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Greetings Everyone,

 

We currently have a thread focused on the discussion on subscription numbers. To help us organize discussion on this topic please use the following thread:

 

Subs down 25%

 

In regards to speculation regarding "expansions" the following quote is from the previous version of the provided thread.

 

This is referring to content patches (like 1.2 and 1.3), not to "expansions" (which most people think of as a boxed product).

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