SWTOR is EA's "largest ever" project

"BioWare's Star Wars: The Old Republic is the most expensive game ever created at EA.

The publisher's chief banker Eric Brown described the MMO as the "largest ever development project, period, in the history of the company".

He said a packaged game usually costs around $30m to make at EA, but "any MMO costs significantly more than that".

When asked by a member of the Wedbush Morgan Securities audience in New York today how the cost compared to World of Warcraft, Brown said Blizzard spent "$100 million, perhaps more" to ship the game in 2004.

"That's lifetime [research and development] to actually ship it and obviously then there's maintenance subsequent to ship and expansion packs," Brown added.

These days, WOW makes around $100m a month from subscriptions. EA no doubt hopes SWTOR will recoup costs in a similar fashion.

"MMOs are sizeable undertakings," quipped Brown.

EA is steering Star Wars: The Old Republic towards a spring 2011 release. Take that with a pinch of salt, as these things slip."

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/swtor-is-eas-largest-ever-project

I hope it's gonna be succesful.That's a lot of money.

I do remember playing SW:Galaxies though :P

I'm excited for this game. It looks to be very interesting, so hopefully it does well.

WoW taking around $100 million a month is insane. no wonder they want a slice of that big fat juicy money pie

Yeah, I understand. I'd just not like this game to launch with the stigma that is Galaxies.Ibacai

Let's hope they will upgrade the graphical engine with that kind of money. For a 100+ millions mmo, it looks terrible, worst than WoW at release...Franko_3

Hopefully the dough gets racked in to conclude the KOTOR storyline then :D (no TOR =/= KOTOR 3 >:( )moose_knuckler

Well it is the only game in the near future that has the recipe to be able to take on WoW.

They just better not release it right after Cataclysm comes out, that would only hurt em.

[QUOTE="moose_knuckler"]Hopefully the dough gets racked in to conclude the KOTOR storyline then :D (no TOR =/= KOTOR 3 >:( )Ibacai

So far, so good. I probably won't be picking it up, but hope for Bioware's success in bringing down the evil empire (Activision).

Even just the halving of WoW's revenues, combined with ruin of their band games and bastardization of CoD, could be enough to severely damage Activision.

Let's hope they will upgrade the graphical engine with that kind of money. For a 100+ millions mmo, it looks terrible, worst than WoW at release...Franko_3

Oblivion MMO > KOTOR MMODiviniuz

Have they showed raiding? Or pvp yet? I haven't seen anything special about this game yet, the whole VO thing is really not going to make an MMO great it needs awesome pvp/pve. I hope it owns but It'll prbably fail, Blizz's next MMO is going to be beast for sure.

Oblivion MMO > KOTOR MMODiviniuz

HAHAHA good joke.

We'll see.

Warhammer: Age of Reckoning didnt realy do all that well.

Have they showed raiding? Or pvp yet? I haven't seen anything special about this game yet, the whole VO thing is really not going to make an MMO great it needs awesome pvp/pve. I hope it owns but It'll prbably fail, Blizz's next MMO is going to be beast for sure.

Eddie-Vedder

Have they showed raiding? Eddie-Vedder

No.

They have talked about it but they haven't shown anything yet. As far as I know. . .

[QUOTE="Eddie-Vedder"]

Have they showed raiding? Or pvp yet? I haven't seen anything special about this game yet, the whole VO thing is really not going to make an MMO great it needs awesome pvp/pve. I hope it owns but It'll prbably fail, Blizz's next MMO is going to be beast for sure.

GhoX

I just hope the playerbase is like EQ and nothing like WoW. I view WoW as a quarantine zone for the slow people of the world.

I do remember playing SW:Galaxies though :P

Lto_thaG

We'll see.

Warhammer: Age of Reckoning didnt realy do all that well.

chaplainDMK

Every new thing I see about this game looks so promising. I want it sooooooo bad. Could change the current mmo model forever.WithoutGraceXII

and it will still get creamed by wow

not saying its a good thing but its just fact

I just hope the playerbase is like EQ and nothing like WoW. I view WoW as a quarantine zone for the slow people of the world.

Fizzman

There is a LOT riding on this game. I have extremely high hopes for it, it's an MMO I will actually play.Hahadouken