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It Doesn't Look Like Star Wars: The Old Republic Will Be a 2010 Release

EA's CEO, John Riccitiello, predicts the game will come out sometime next year

Jan 12, 2010 11:49 GMT  ·  By
BioWare needs to force-speed the game back into 2010
   BioWare needs to force-speed the game back into 2010

While some Star Wars fans were expecting the next BioWare addition to the franchise to be more in the lines of a Knights of the Old Republic 3, the fact that it's a massively multiplayer online role-playing game still has people on the edge of their seat. While some might continue to complain and bicker about this just being another MMO, the game's popularity and the amount of expectations fan have for it cannot be denied. During last year's month of September, BioWare opened up subscriptions for a beta test of the game, and the response from the fans was overwhelming.

While some companies will announce positive responses regarding their products with less concerns for reality, choosing to see the glass as completely full instead of broken off near the bottom and leaking water, BioWare didn't need to interpret reality. The facts were pretty clear when the subscription servers went down from the sheer amount of people that were accessing the subscription page. Now, over three months later since the beta was announced, all the game classes have been revealed and new planets are added regularly to the Holonet, so one could only assume that the full release can't be too far away.

Unfortunately, Electronic Arts doesn't share our optimistic expectations, and it looks like the game won't be a 2010 release at all. Yesterday, EA made a 2010 fiscal year update, and its CEO, John Riccitiello, is the one that brought up the Star Wars: The Old Republic subject. While pegging it as a key driver of the company's digital business, he also tagged the game as making "great progress towards a spring 2011 launch."

The exact sentence he gave the game was, "One key driver is going to be the launch date of our major MMO. As it stands today, the game is making great progress towards a spring 2011 launch," and it looks pretty set in stone that it will take a while before the dark side and the light will clash online. Kotaku tried to reach out to BioWare to get a second opinion on the diagnostic, but the developers haven't replied as of yet.