14 DAY TRIAL // The announcement that Star Wars: The Old Republic has dropped 400,000 subscribers since February has spooked investors in publisher Electronic Arts and some have begun selling their shares, but the company leader says that there’s nothing to be worried about when it comes to the new BioWare MMO.
John Riccitiello, who is the chief executive officer at Electronic Arts, appeared on the Mad Money program on CNBC and stated, “When we originally started the franchise, our plan was to break 1 million subscribers. Our investment case was 1.2 million. We told the street yesterday we’re at 1.3 million.
“We happened to have an earnings call right in the launch period, where we hit 1.7 million. We have an obligation to tell them the facts. Realistically, I think it’s a solid success.”
The executive says that Electronic Arts has never seen The Old Republic as the type of video game that would outperform its best seller, the FIFA and the Madden NFL sports simulations series.
Riccitiello added, “Some people are treating it like it’s the only thing that matters. For what it’s worth, it’s a solid, successful, profitable franchise.”
Electronic Arts posted better-than-expected results earlier during the week, showing more revenue than analyst were expecting and posting solid growth in the digital sales space.
Star Wars: The Old Republic was launched in late December 2011 and some analysts believed that the game had the potential to threaten the dominant position that World of Warcraft has in the subscription-based market.
The BioWare MMO has performed well and the development team working on it has plans to introduce more content and more events in order to persuade gamers to renew their subscriptions for the long term.
Some analysts believe that The Old Republic will see a constant subscriber drop in the coming months, before going free-to-play.