14 DAY TRIAL // After a very long wait, which included rumors about further delays, the developers at the Austin studio of BioWare and the executives at publisher Electronic Arts have announced that Star Wars: The Old Republic will be launched this year, on December 20 in the United States and two days later in Europe.
This is good news for gamers who have long waited to see how BioWare could push past their great Knights of the Old Republic titles and for Star Wars fans who are looking forward to create a character and live a piece of the history of their favorite franchise.
Alongside the launch date announcement Electronic Arts also talked about the business model and the pricing for The Old Republic, offering gamers three initial options:
- 14.99 dollars/12.99 Euro/8.99 British Pounds for one month of play; - 41.97 dollars/35.97 Euro/25.17 Pounds for three months, payable in one charge; - 77.94 dollars/65.94 Euro/46.14 Pounds for six months.
Those who pick up the game will also get one month of play time with it.
Clearly Electronic Arts believes that subscription based MMOs have a future and is willing to bet more than 100 million dollars reportedly spent on The Old Republic on this.
The only question is: how many months can Star Wars: The Old Republic expect to keep these prices going?
I believe that the hype and the Star Wars license will give The Old Republic quite a bit of an initial following and the game might march quickly to over 1 million players but it's unlikely that many of these will be willing to pay the prices mentioned above for more than 3 to 6 months.
So expect to see Electronic Arts keep subscription rates up until the middle of 2012, cut them a little at that points and make the game free to play or something closely resembling that by the end of next year, signaling that the subscription model is all but dead (the exception being World of Warcraft).