14 DAY TRIAL // After just releasing Star Wars: The Old Republic into commercial success, at least judging by the crowded servers of the online game, BioWare, its developer, has confirmed that it has several plans to ensure the title’s profitability no matter its actual popularity.
BioWare has just released Star Wars: The Old Republic, the eagerly awaited online role playing game that’s been in development for quite some time and called, more than once, a WoW-killer, as it’s pretty much the only game that might have a chance against Blizzard’s massively successful World of Warcraft.
But game director James Ohlen believes that WoW was a “once in a lifetime kind of game” and that “while I'd love to compete with them, I'm fine with us just being successful and having our own niche. I don't think it's healthy for our team to be constantly comparing ourselves against another game, especially since there's room in the market to have two big MMOs.”
Ohlen then went on to say that, while BioWare wants the game to be successful, the game has several plans that will make it profitable, no matter the number of subscribers it will manage to attract.
"There are different levels of success and we have all the different models built out," he explained to Gamasutra. "While we want to be super-successful, we also need to plan for not hitting all our targets. Can we then still be profitable? Yes, but it will take longer. While I can't give away exact numbers, I can say that we have plans for super success in the millions of subscribers... and then we have plans for if we have a much smaller subscriber base.”
Once again coming back to the WoW comparison, he says that The Old Republic “could be well below WoW and still be incredibly profitable.”
As of yet, however, it seems that Star Wars: The Old Republic is a success and BioWare already mentioned its future plans for the online title, with big updates and new features being scheduled to appear throughout 2012.