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Analyst believes Star Wars: The Old Republic had a $500 million price tag

by Eliot Lefebvre on Jan 17th 2012 7:00PM

Sci-Fi, MMO Industry, News Items, Star Wars: The Old Republic

112

Half a billion dollars to choke someone with your mind. Not an awful investment.

Is Star Wars: The Old Republic the next big thing in MMOs? The same old thing in a new shell? Innovative? Routine? Polished? Buggy? Ask seven different people and you'll get nine different opinions. The one thing that everyone can agree on is that the game was expensive, and while most analysts are estimating somewhere between $100-$300 million, analyst Doug Creutz suspects that Electronic Arts has sunk nearly half a billion dollars into the project.

This is in stark contrast to the estimate from analyst Michael Pachter, who targeted the price tag at roughly $80 million when all was said and done. Unfortunately, the precise cost won't be known unless EA decides to release the game's official budget and how much was spent on development, which seems unlikely. What is certain is that the performance of Star Wars: The Old Republic is going to be under close scrutiny over the coming months among both fans of the game and fans of financial speculation.

[Thanks to Ben for the tip!]

Via: VG24/7
Source: Comments by Douglas Creutz
More coverage: Official Site

Tags: analyst, bioware, bioware-mythic, cost, development-cost, ea, ea-bioware, electronic-arts, financial-analyst, investment, mmo-industry, price-tag, star-wars-the-old-republic, swtor, the-old-republic, tor

Reader Comments (112)

I believe that I have superpowers. I have no evidence at all to back up my belief, but I will espouse it anyway and try to parlay it into some financial gain for myself.

@(Unverified)
It's obvious SWTOR cost more than 80millions to make.

Its also obvious it didn't cost 500millions either.

Its also obvious a part of the budget was wasted.

@kalipou134
It's assumptions like this that get me.

Maybe it's not obvious it cost more than $80 million because maybe they didn't waste as much/any of the budget as 'we' think?

Just saying is all, it's a logical step that everyone seems to ignore. Everyone's saying "where'd all the money go" yet people keep saying more and more money has been spent on it... wut?

It's just like how the official forums have people raging about want high rez textures (which I'm for) but then an equally popular rage is going on about low rez being too much for some computers... yet each side continues to ignores each others existence and blames BW saying they're lying when they make statements including everyone.

Haters gonna hate?

@Alph In the world of economy and finance assumptions are the main weapons. Keep in mind that assumptions are based on previous information.

Basically it's extrapolating information from previous states of the/a market/market entity, taking that info and merging it to create a behavioral model for said market/market entity.

Seeing how inefficient big companies are, seeing how much money other companies have spent on creating MMOs of this scale and sizing up the amount of advertising SWToR has had it's pretty much a safe bet to say EA/Bioware have spent way more than 80 million.

Yes, it's an assumption but it's not baseless. At all. And saying these kind of assumptions are meaningless and useless (things you DID NOT directly say, of course) is just a sign of ignorance and/or close-mindedness.

@Alph Oh, and to clear the thing about hi-res textures: they can easily do what many games did! What IS that, you ask? Making them optional to install.

EA louse... seems the one we burned @ the stake. was a witch and 100% accurate.....
And no Hi Res Textures for 500m? im betting someones off shore account is phat!!!!

@AbelNightRoad
the high res textures are there, they just...oh nevermind, its worth trying to inform the wilfully ignorant.

I'd love to know how he came to that figure because it seems questionable, to say the least.

There's no reason to spend even close to that sort of money unless EA were chasing the mythical 'wow killer', and if that is the case then they're going to be sorely disapointed.

Although they haven't said so, being EA I wouldn't be surprised if that was their intent - if they can make a big deal of putting Battlefield 3 head to head with Modern Warfare 3 then they can delude themselves into thinking they can make a wow-killer.

This is all that $500 million buys?? Really? I've seen better come out of Indy developers...

@Ryn My thoughts exactly.

@Ryn Really? Which indie mmo is this you're talking about?

@Ryn Care to share because I would love to play it if true and show my support for indy guys

@Ryn

"I've seen better come out of Indy developers... "

I'm fairly sure you were just trying to illustrate your point and this wasn't meant as a demonstrable fact. However, if you are hiding some indie game with production values on the lines of SWTOR, please tell me, I want to invest right now!

If that's true, then they really didn't get that kind of value. I mean, the game is good. It's just not half-a-billion good.

@JonBuck I just wish they'd thrown some of that money at their UI guy. Poor dude. Maybe if he'd gotten paid, he could've made a scalable, moveable UI.

I do not believe the 500 mil number. What if its just 100, then its all profit.

The last price tag I heard from Bioware was something along the lines of $300 mil. I assume that was a low ball estimate and I can completely believe a $500 mil price tag.

The thing I find most amusing by this (if it is true of course) is that they spent $500 mil on a game that will NEVER get into the black. I repeat, this game will NEVER reach $500 mil in sales + sub revenue.

Maybe companies will finally realize that they can't keep feeding us the same old, tired, beaten horse that we have been given at every turn for the past 7-8 years. Sorry SWTOR fanboys, this game is just like every other game out there with the exception of a huge price tag, and some cinematics that I prefer not to see more than once.

@Maseno

$60x 1,000,000 first day subscribers. (Assuming no one bought collectors edition or higher)
Let's say a stupidly huge number of people don't pay for one month.
$15x750,000

So far, at it's most barebones minimum, they're at $71,250,000, after 4 weeks.

"Never" is a very long time.

But then again you've probably never been right!

@Maseno

"The last price tag I heard from Bioware was something along the lines of $300 mil."

You NEVER heard that figure from Bioware. If you can somehow prove it with a direct source from Bioware themselves, I'll gladly come back here and eat my words.

@Beltyra

that's still 28,583,334 subs needed, if we assume of the 750,000 in your estimate continue subbing without ever leaving that's still 39 months (well 38.1) so 3 and a quarter years of 750,000 subs.....I dunno might be stretching it.

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Analyst believes Star Wars: The Old Republic had a $500 million price tag

Reader Comments (112)

Posted: Jan 17th 2012 7:09PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jan 17th 2012 8:30PM kalipou134 said

Posted: Jan 17th 2012 9:43PM Alph said

Posted: Jan 19th 2012 6:04AM HackJack said

Posted: Jan 19th 2012 6:07AM HackJack said

Posted: Jan 17th 2012 7:12PM AbelNightRoad said

Posted: Jan 17th 2012 11:12PM KvanCetre said

Posted: Jan 17th 2012 7:15PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jan 17th 2012 7:16PM Ryn said

Posted: Jan 17th 2012 7:27PM Amlin said

Posted: Jan 18th 2012 2:59AM dudemanjac said

Posted: Jan 18th 2012 3:28AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jan 18th 2012 6:39AM Purkit said

Posted: Jan 17th 2012 7:17PM JonBuck said

Posted: Jan 18th 2012 9:24AM DeadlyAccurate said

Posted: Jan 17th 2012 7:19PM Critical Mass said

Posted: Jan 17th 2012 7:34PM Maseno said

Posted: Jan 17th 2012 8:02PM Beltyra said

Posted: Jan 17th 2012 8:39PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jan 17th 2012 8:42PM Protoavis said

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