14 DAY TRIAL // Star Wars: The Old Republic, the MMO that is being developed by BioWare and will be published by Electronic Arts, might not yet have a clear launch date, but the executives in charge of it are more than happy to talk about how the fact that they spent a lot of money on it is a sign that the game will deliver both quantity and quality when it's out.
Frank Gibeau, who is the leader of the EA Games division at the publisher, has spoken to GamesIndustry about the development philosophy of his company and stated, “What I try and concentrate on is, is it a good game and is it ready to go?”
He says that EA pumped a lot of money into The Old Republic because the developers at BioWare needed them to create a huge amount of content, which includes six classes each of them with 200 hours of gameplay.
Gibeau added, “Do I wish it wasn’t this expensive? Absolutely, but I think everybody does. At the same time it doesn’t really do us much good to comment on how much it costs. Ultimately what matters is whether it’s a good service and do people really like the game?”
The executive has also said that Ultima, an MMO that is more than 10 years old, still has tens of thousands of players and is still making money for Electronic Arts, mainly because of its huge popularity at launch.
Electronic Arts has lately focused on delivering a smaller number of better quality titles rather than focusing on putting out as many games as possible.
Rumors suggested that the MMO might have cost more than 100 million dollars to develop although EA refused to confirm the figure.
I had a hands-on with Star Wars: The Old Republic at the E3 2011 trade show and came away pretty impressed with what it had to offer.