Darth Hater

Star Wars: The Old Republic News, Interviews, Media & Podcast

  • Hint of Star Wars: The Old Republic Release Date?

    Earlier today, Electronics Arts updated their outlook for fiscal year 2010 with a press release and a conference call. The majority of the call dealt specifically with the slew of titles releasing this spring, however, a bit of Star Wars: The Old Republic news found it's way into the Q&A section at the end. After being asked about their lower expectations for 2010, EA CEO John Riccitiello said the following:

    A couple other thoughts on fiscal '11 that I think might be helpful. We are very cognizant of a need to drive growth margins and operating margins, and some of our distribution businesses have provided us luxury profitability that we like. So for now at least we are planning our distribution businesses to be sharply down in fiscal '11.

    On the digital side, while we've got a great number of initiatives, one key driver will be the launch of our major MMO. As it stands today, the game is making great progress towards a spring 2011 launch. But given the volatility of this particular sector, and the fact that we haven't yet provided a specific launch date, at least for now, we're excluding the revenue from our FY'11 plan for guidance.


    With no other known "major MMO" in development, this can be interpreted to mean that they are working towards a Spring 2011 launch date for Star Wars: The Old Republic. However, a fiscal conference call is an unlikely venue for an announcement of this gravity, and this comment is bracketed by talk of fiscal year 2011, which is predominately calendar 2010.

    We contacted LucasArts and BioWare for an official comment, and we will keep you updated with any developments.

    Update (Jan 12 - 11:09 AM EST): Sean posted an update just minutes ago regarding the news -

    While we have not announced a specific date, we can confirm that we are targeting a spring 2011 release for Star Wars: The Old Republic. We've got a lot of exciting updates and reveals planned throughout 2010, including the first-ever hands-on testing for the game. It's not too late to sign up to be a game tester, so go to www.swtor.com/tester and sign up today. We can't wait to share more about the game with you as we progress through the year, so make sure you stay tuned to the official website for details.

  • EA Earnings Confrence Call Mentions TOR

    For those of you who may not listen to the podcast, but should, EA had their Q2 2010 earnings conference call on November 9th. The vast majority of the conference call was directed at the recent acquisition of the social gaming developer Playfish, but it did contain a few gems relating to Star Wars: The Old Republic. Lets take a closer look at the relevant pieces of the call.

  • Misinformation on Microtransactions

    There seems to be quite the amount of misinformation making the rounds on the forum as of late and in an attempt to quell the flames I need to reiterate that Bioware has not made any statements regarding a use of a payment model whatsoever. This discussion started way back when EA Boss Riccitiello stated that The Old Republic's payment model would be microtransaction based. EA then sometime after retracted the statement attributing the comments to a misunderstanding. Flash forward to this last week when LucasArts President Darrell Rodriguez was interviewed by GamesIndustry on the payment model, speculation ensued from one quote:

    And on that point of business models, he added: "Yeah, were considering it all, absolutely."

    "You start looking at how different communities, territories such as Asia, actually play games, and we start to consider it all especially if we want it to be a worldwide phenomenon."


    Many people on the forum then took that comment out of context as a confirmation of a microtransaction model being used in the US and other territories even though the quote does not say or confirm anything near that. Furthermore in an interview with TenTonHammer, Blaine Christine was quick to dismiss the rumor:

    Ten Ton Hammer: Rumors persist about microtransactions in The Old Republic. Are the rumors accurate or not?

    Blaine Christine: The bottom line with that is that its a total rumor since we havent talked about pricing structure or subscription plans at all. So people dont need to worry about anything if that is a worry we will do whatever makes sense for the game.


    You can stop claiming that they're using a microtransaction model from those comments as confirmation now ;) .
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