The Force is with SWTOR: EA stock bounces back, budget revealed

It seems like everyone is obsessed with the exact amount of money EA spent creating its most expensive title ever, but the Los Angeles Times may have a final number to end the discussion: Apparently, Star Wars: The Old Republic cost $200 million. Other interesting details from the Times' investigation into what it calls a "galactic gamble" include the fact that it was made by 800 people on four continents with an additional 1,000 voice actors (doing three languages) handling 4,000 characters.

The project was such a massive undertaking that BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk likened it to "teaching elephants to do ballet." One of the interesting details of this behind-the-scenes expose is that BioWare said that certain movies and TV miniseries influenced class storylines, such as Big Trouble in Little China for the Smuggler and Band of Brothers for the Trooper.

There's also some good news following yesterday's word of EA's stock hit. MarketWatch reports that several brokers have defended the title, resulting in a 2% bounce back in EA's stock. As part of that, a Pacific Crest analyst raised his predictions of quarter sales for SWTOR from 1.5 to 2.2 million, with 800,000 subscribers. Another analyst claims that over two million units of SWTOR have been sold since launch with an expectation that 75% to 90% of players will stay on as paid subscribers following the first free month.

Reader Comments (128)

"Another analyst claims that over two million units of SWTOR have been sold since launch with an expectation that 75% to 90% of players will stay on as paid subscribers following the first free month."

75% to 90%? That analyst is as out of touch with reality as the guy that claimed EA spent $500 million. Though, to be fair, the L.A. Times report doesn't necessarily include advertising.

Anyway, 800k is exactly what I was predicting by the end of January, so I'm agree with that other analyst. However, that's still less than what EA/Bioware was originally projecting. And that's only 300k more than what Bioware off-handledly remarked they would need to turn a profit on TOR after an analyst claimed TOR would need to maintain a million plus subscribers for a year.

Knowing that the Trooper class quest is loosely based on the show Band of Brothers means I need to start playing that class and roll along another month to see this story run on a little longer.

@Gojant They had me at Big Trouble in Little China.

Best. Damn. 80s. Movie. Ever. Kurt Russell yelling "WANG!" for 90 minutes is just priceless.

Ha.

Waiting for poster "Concerned" to still try to convince us we're sailing on a sinking ship. Maybe he can will the game into failing if he copies his post, and reposts it multiple times. Whatever....

@Mtor

Oh look, it's Bobby Kotick from Acti... I mean Mtor

A game costing that much money you'd expect it to do something new other than voice overs, which ain't exactly new in MMOs anyways. Every person I speak to says the same thing "I'm tired of this type of MMO" and I'm right there with them. Just wish Bioware didn't something innovative rather than making WoW with voice overs.

The graphics just don't justify the budget for this game. Might as well done
Blur Studio movie with that kind of money.
Or use the Gamebryo game engine that has proven track record with Rift
and Warhammer.

@BubleFett Gamebryo is a horrible engine.

I have no clue what the real budget of this game was, but where are these LA times writers getting there info? I don't see a source cited.

I thought $500 million seemed high, but even so....somebody better start checking the books, because if they spent $200 freaking million dollars on SWTOR, it sure as hell doesn't show it.

Somebody over at Bioware must have bought themselves a Porsche or two.

@Nenene

"800 people on four continents with an additional 1,000 voice actors (doing three languages) handling 4,000 characters."

Let's just assume some basics:

We'll break the number down and round up for simplicity: So instead of 1,800 employees, we'll say 2,000.

They'd have to make $100,000 each to equal $200 million.

Sounds like a good gig, but I am just assuming they got paid that for one years work. Break that number down to 4 or 5 years, we are talking about $20,000-25,000 a person.

These are simply rough estimates. Some people made more than others. Some only did so much work for a limited time. like VO people.

If you put it in a day-to-day context and simply not "materials" or "what $200 million can buy", then it makes practical sense.

@Nenene

Not saying Porsche buying wasn't hidden somewhere in there, but break the number down and work it over the number of people and the years of work, it makes sense.

@Nenene you do know an infrastructure to host the hundreds of servers they have on multiple continents isnt cheap right ?

@Space Cobra

And yet the game still looks like crap and has nothing really innovative besides the fact that it has succeeded in convincing people that they are playing an MMO when in fact it's a big single player online with some co-op + the Star Wars IP attached to it.

@(Unverified) Looking at Blizzard's server upkeep costs etc that they report to shareholders, and assuming similar figures. In the bigger scheme of things, yes those costs are actually quite cheap and insignificant.

@Valdur

And again, I like the graphics. I see the problems in some of the textures, but I can ignore them. As for single-player, I always *knew* it was that type of game play. For me, that's a non-issue. All pre-beta info pointed this out, if you were paying attention and figuring out the game instead of jumping on "wishful thinking" like everyone else was that also jumped on the "hype train".

Game is not perfect, but I don't care. It fills up my cup of tea fine for the while. I don't see game-breaking bugs that I can't compensate with. I don't have a 50 yet. I am fairly confident these bugs will be fixed, even though the forums are typical in lack-of-dev response (although they just issued two statements last night).

That's,,,about it. I wasn't expecting "innovation" even when they were hinting (saying) that they'd be innovative. I've learned to look beyond hype of company and political statements. And I was right in SWTOR's case. No surprises on my side. If you do not enjoy the game, find another one. Or, live and learn from this as other companies release statements over upcoming MMOs.

I'll certainly be giving them the 14.99 for another month. I haven't really heard any mass grumbling among the players about wanting to unsubscribe. I think their retention will be decent, if not at the levels they predicted.

@claytondora

Who is the "they" you are referring to? I don't recall where EA/Bioware predicted a certain retention percentage, unless you can dig up a source?

Wouldn't 75% to 90% retention be absolutely unprecedented in the history of MMORPGs?

@(Unverified) I'd suspect so. My understanding is that a 40% - 50% retention rate is more typical, especially around launch. Both WAR and AoC were closer to about 30% retention after 3 months.

However, player numbers can still grow if new players joining the game exceed the churn. SWOR has other countries it can roll out to that will help it grow.

As a point of comparison, both RIFT and DCUO cost over US$50m, so US$200m for SWOR seems very possible.

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The Force is with SWTOR: EA stock bounces back, budget revealed

Reader Comments (128)

Posted: Jan 20th 2012 4:37PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jan 20th 2012 4:38PM Gojant said

Posted: Jan 21st 2012 5:43AM Pyromelter said

Posted: Jan 20th 2012 4:41PM rgolch said

Posted: Jan 20th 2012 4:58PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jan 20th 2012 5:07PM Miffy said

Posted: Jan 20th 2012 5:15PM BubleFett said

Posted: Jan 20th 2012 6:38PM Weiji said

Posted: Jan 20th 2012 5:17PM Plastic said

Posted: Jan 20th 2012 5:27PM Nenene said

Posted: Jan 20th 2012 6:14PM Space Cobra said

Posted: Jan 20th 2012 6:15PM Space Cobra said

Posted: Jan 20th 2012 7:59PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jan 20th 2012 10:49PM Valdur said

Posted: Jan 21st 2012 5:50AM wahahabuh said

Posted: Jan 21st 2012 10:29AM Space Cobra said

Posted: Jan 20th 2012 5:35PM claytondora said

Posted: Jan 20th 2012 6:45PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jan 20th 2012 5:35PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jan 21st 2012 12:39AM UnSub said

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