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Analyst Predicts Over 1M SWTOR Subscribers in First Year

Gamasutra reports Janco analyst Mike Hickey noted Star Wars: The Old Republic could generate $161.9 million in total sales and $35 million in profits during its first 12 months of release, and investors are confident targets of 500K to 1M subscribers are achievable in the same time frame.

Hickey said he expects initial sales figures for the game to "far exceed" the 500,000 to 1 million range, but "game development must be perfectly orchestrated" in order to sustain the subscriber base.

Head over to Gamasutra for more.

Comments

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  • Kaluahmon's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #43 Kaluahmon Posted 4/27/2011 2:18:07 PM
    Considering that I am still playing KOTOR 1 and Mass Effect 1 and 2, 8 KOTOR's minimum should keep me busy for a loooooong time, even without content patches. I am not worried about this game at all.
  • Evel's avatar
    Jawa Trader
    • Posts: 281
    #35 Evel Posted 4/26/2011 4:01:35 PM
    Poor speculation if you ask me. Based on past games by EA/BioWare and other MMO's I can easily see SW:TOR selling 1.5m boxes in the first year alone. A far as sustained subscribers that it impossible to predict because it will ultimately depend on several key factors:

    1) The launch. Games with horribles launches often do worse in the long haul.
    2) The Gameplay. We all hope it will be a great game, but lets face it. Majority of the MMO's released in the last 5-years have failed horribly at maintaining any sort of long subscriber base.

    Optimistically SW:TOR will maintain 1m subscribers in the first year. Pessimistically it will maintain 500K subscribers in the first year.
  • stoffi's avatar
    Jawa Trader
    • Posts: 192
    #38 stoffi Posted 4/26/2011 7:09:37 PM
    Story might keep people sucked in for some time, even reviewers with negative view said that they wanted to know more.

    That alone though, won't probably be enough.
  • DarthShnooky's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #39 DarthShnooky Posted 4/26/2011 7:32:53 PM
    Story will hook a lot of people, and will keep some people. But end game content is the key. That includes endgame raids, pvp, replay through rolling new toons (never underestimate the importance of alts for a lot of players), etc. So really depends on how they deliver those things.
  • Vastori's avatar
    Jawa Trader
    • Posts: 98
    #41 Vastori Posted 4/27/2011 3:09:39 AM
    "replay through rolling new toons (never underestimate the importance of alts for a lot of players)"

    I think BW is banking on story to carry this segment of the population.
  • Melanieshaman's avatar
    Jawa Trader
    • Posts: 81
    #45 Melanieshaman Posted 4/27/2011 8:31:23 PM
    I know of at least 3-4 alts i will roll once i am done with my Sith Inquisitor. This game will keep me going for some time i am sure of it!
  • yandex's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #32 yandex Posted 4/26/2011 1:41:05 PM
    Good! So I can find groups easily!
  • JediCosmin's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #31 JediCosmin Posted 4/26/2011 12:55:53 PM
    They can have my money as far as I'm concerned ;)
  • Harper's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #30 Harper Posted 4/26/2011 10:51:53 AM
    Sheesh, do you really need an analyst to predict that?
  • Tarentaal's avatar
    Gamorrean Thug
    • Posts: 48
    #29 Tarentaal Posted 4/26/2011 8:58:13 AM
    Interestingly Star Wars is out on Blu-Ray end of September. You watch SWTOR launch around the same time, coordinated marketing makes a lot of sense. Autumn at least in the northern hemisphere is the perfect time as the weather gets worse and the days get shorter. All the talk of spring/summer launch was always daft to me...
  • RadeIronclaw's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #40 RadeIronclaw Posted 4/27/2011 2:37:51 AM
    I'm glad someone else had the same thought. As soon as I heard about Star Wars on Blu-Ray (which I am of course getting), I assumed TOR would launch about the same time. Lucas is a masterful marketer.
  • Jaswar's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #27 Jaswar Posted 4/26/2011 6:08:42 AM
    This....

    "game development must be perfectly orchestrated" in order to sustain the subscriber base.

  • chumppi's avatar
    Gamorrean Thug
    • Posts: 40
    #22 chumppi Posted 4/26/2011 12:46:01 AM
    1 million regular subs would be great for the mmo genre as a whole, no other western mmo has been able to do that since the release of wow. But I am guessing that there will be about 2,5mil buyers first week/month of the game, depending on the end-game quality, we'll see how many of those people stay.

    - Never argue with an idiot, they'll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience

  • Pollux's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #20 Pollux Posted 4/25/2011 11:54:57 PM
    I think this number will highly depend on release date and current game state of WoW. Because WoW is losing players every day as I witness on my realm and my guild, a lot of people stopped playing, including me, because the game became boring even without completing all content.

    So if you are looking for a release date, and IF(very big if) the game will be released in second half of the year. My guess is about month before final content patch of Cataclysm. That should put release date to a window of 3 or 4 months starting with August. So tens of thousands player who are on break due to boredom and burnout won't hook up back to the WoW and go for final content as it happen last year.
  • Hellig's avatar
    Nerf Herder
    • Posts: 2
    #16 Hellig Posted 4/25/2011 7:11:44 PM
    And at the moment WoW is slowly bleeding of players, so there will be a base of gameless players to take from
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