Star Wars: The Old Republic Arrives in 2011, After July 1

Video game publisher Electronic Arts has announced that Star Wars: The Old Republic is set to be launched during this calendar year but no sooner than July 1, meaning that the company is probably targeting the very profitable autumn launch period.

Speaking at the Lazard Capital Markets Technology and Media Conference, Eric Brown, who is the chief financial officer at Electronic Arts, stated, “So we said it’s going to launch sometime in calendar, but not within Fiscal 11. So that basically pens down between, you know, April 1st and December 31st of this calendar year.”

He then added, “It’s also reasonable to infer that it’s not in our Q1 guidance. We gave Q1 Fiscal 11, Fiscal 12 non-gap revenue guidance, minus 39 minus 44 cents and I think it’s not unreasonable to infer that it’s not included in that 90 day period.”

Electronic Arts also revealed that about 1.5 million players had expressed an interest in becoming beta testers for Star Wars: The Old Republic, which is a good sign for the developer and publisher, suggesting that there's a much bigger number of players that are ready to get it and play it when it is officially launched.

At the moment, Star Wars: The Old Republic is in closed beta, with a limited number of players testing the main mechanics of the game, and Brown has not said when the beta might go open and how many players will be invited to play the MMO and offer feedback to the developers.

The CFO added that the market for MMOs in North America and in Europe is made up of about 12 million players, with about half of them playing World of Warcraft, the Blizzard-developed leader of the field.

BioWare and EA have repeatedly said that they aim to get a stable audience for The Old Republic, although they are not interested in directly challenging World of Warcraft.