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SWTOR is EA's Biggest Development Project Ever

Eurogamer reports on a quote from Electronic Arts' Chief Financial Officer Eric Brown, who spoke at a Wedbush Morgan conference in New York on March 10th. Eric Brown stated that Star Wars: The Old Republic is "[the] largest ever development project, period, in the history of the company."

When you take a look at previous projects created by Electronic Arts, this speaks volumes. EA has several big name franchises, such as "The Sims," and "Command and Conquer". The news that The Old Republic exceeds these titles in terms of the scope of development certainly reinforces the idea that the game is being given a high priority within Electronic Arts.

Brown mentioned production costs of similar games, like World of Warcraft, which Blizzard spent "$100 million, perhaps more" to bring to market in 2004. This shows the general scope of the game as well as the quality that Bioware, and indeed EA as a whole, are aiming for. One reason they are likely investing so much is because they know they only have one launch and an MMO can be a make or break deal.

Comments

  • Draebein's avatar
    Nerf Herder
    • Posts: 12
    #8 Draebein Posted 3/11/2010 11:51:27 PM
    Well in that case the earlier failures of EA's MMO projects should indicate that they are not at all going to take this project lighlty. The fan base can be immense due to nature of the product, dumping millions of dollars into a product only to loose your butt's is not something any company enjoy's. Plus it is BioWare and EA I have the utmost faith in these two companies providing a top of the line product. I can not wait to play this game but I will still be patient because Rome wasn't built in a day. Until then I'm abstaining from MMO's so I will be more amazed when it actually comes out. So take your time oh and by the way DH I love the new site Congrats.

    Sorry this was supposed to be a reply to Perkunas statement below.
  • Hobowan's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #4 Hobowan Posted 3/11/2010 10:15:48 PM
    Much money does not necessarily mean it's big content wise. I surely hope it is, but that's no indicator at all. Only imagine the fully voiced thing. They need hundreds of actors, and all of them have to get paid. Who knows how much money this single feature eats up without exceeding known games' mass of content...

    It would be nice to know how many million $ EA poured into SWTOR. 100m$ for WoW is much, but also this information is worthless without the ability to compare it to SWTOR.
  • RogueJedi86's avatar
    Jawa Trader
    • Posts: 3118
    #6 RogueJedi86 Posted 3/11/2010 10:27:24 PM
    Yeah, all we know from those numbers they gave is that TOR has a budget higher than the $30 million for EA's usual games, and that WoW is about $100 million. TOR could be $31 million, or it could be $150 million. All we know is the bare minimum.
  • DirectX's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #3 DirectX Posted 3/11/2010 10:11:50 PM
    Impressive, most impressive.
  • GoHann's avatar
    Jawa Trader
    • Posts: 289
    #2 GoHann Posted 3/11/2010 9:45:27 PM
    Agree, it should also be noted that this another reason behind the huge development schedule. Which a large part of the ToR community keeps crying about ... "It's already been 4 year's, Waaaaaaa" yeah well get over it LOL

    Wound in the Force::GoHann (lvl 35 Maurader)

  • Snodge's avatar
    Jawa Trader
    • Posts: 225
    #1 Snodge Posted 3/11/2010 9:25:15 PM
    Also bare in mind that Warhammer Age of Reckoning is an MMO which also belongs to EA, which isn't exactly tiny, and before that, Earth and Beyond, another EA MMO was also quite big, it goes some way to put into perspective the scale of development for SWTOR.
  • Perkunas's avatar
    Jawa Trader
    • Posts: 204
    #5 Perkunas Posted 3/11/2010 10:24:05 PM
    Earth and Beyond was rather tiny to be honest. I think we capped at like 50k subscribers and once they stopped giving us regular updates the majority of people began to quit. They saw the writing on the wall and figured it was time to move on.
  • Ascendant's avatar
    • Posts: 0
    #7 Ascendant Posted 3/11/2010 11:16:52 PM
    Sadly you are right. E&B never really took off like it should have. I found it fun, but for whatever reason it just didn't catch on.
  • Perkunas's avatar
    Jawa Trader
    • Posts: 204
    #10 Perkunas Posted 3/12/2010 2:31:54 AM
    EA never really cared for it. They could have tried to market it, increased the amount of content, and worked on making pvp viable and fun. Instead they dumped funds to the vastly inferior Sims Online hoping that the franchise behind it would carry the day. I'll never really forgive EA for having to watch my game and guild slowly die.
  • Sleeper's avatar
    Jawa Trader
    • Posts: 495
    #9 Sleeper Posted 3/12/2010 12:14:56 AM
    It was fun, no doubt. But I could not see myself investing time into the game, was a weird situation.
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