Old Republic Won’t Need a Million Subscribers to Last a Decade

Though EA has funded a few MMOs in the past, they’re indicating that The Old Republic may have a little special mustard on it. Some comments by EA CFO Eric Brown reveal that the MMO’s break-even point is well before the million subscriber mark.

“Our assumptions for break-even and profitability are not seven-digit subscribers,” Brown said. “We think we can run and operate a very successful and profitable MMO at different levels.”

According to Brown, EA and Bioware are in it to make one of the highest quality MMOs ever.

“The key thing here is to really perfect the product. We’re shooting for an extremely high quality game experience. We view this as a ten-year opportunity,” Brown said.

Operating a profitable MMO “at different levels” has me curious. It’s possible that EA is aiming to monetize this game to a variety of different consumers. Does this mean interoperability with social platforms? Maybe they’ll have a tiered subscription model like several recent MMOs that have made the jump to F2P. However they bring in the dollars, they already have guaranteed appeal just by putting Star Wars on the cover.

[via MCV]