Analyst: EA's Spent $500 Million On The Old Republic

Carnagath

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008Zulu said:
Right now all the servers are based in America
Wait, what? Is that a fact? Wait... They spent half a billion on a MMO and they have no regional servers? Hahahahaha. Oh, wow.
 

ThreeWords

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Treblaine said:
That is moving into the are of 'military budgets of small nations' amounts of money. Jesus, that the kind of cash you use building an oil rig or power station.
My evil-MegaCorp [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MegaCorp] light is flashing. This could be an interesting few years...
 

Amnestic

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Aug 22, 2008
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vansau said:
Of course, EA is keeping mum about how much money it actually spent, so there's no hard data to support this theory.
Well it's nice to see we're reporting unsubstantiated numbers as news, I guess.

Bloody hell, being an analyst is easy.

Step 1) Take a commonly held gaming fact (Lots of money was spent on TOR)
Step 2) Attach an inflated number with no hard evidence for it ($500 million? THAT'S A LOT OF MILLIONS!)
Step 3) Profit, I guess.



Earlier today, noted video game analyst Amnestic issued a statement that Activision-Blizzard has spent over $300 million on advertising for the upcoming StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm expansion in South Korea alone. While noted video game analyst Amnestic (who is also handsome and has excellent stamina in the bedroom) did not provide any backup for the numbers, if they're true, then that's a lot of money that's being spent!

Analyst Guy said:
I think it's safe to say that the total all-in investment in 'Star Wars' is probably approaching half a billion dollars.
Analyst Guy seems pretty sure of himself. Did he bother to share his workings on how he came to the conclusion at all? Judging by the article that was linked...no, no he did not.
 

008Zulu_v1legacy

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Carnagath said:
008Zulu said:
Right now all the servers are based in America
Wait, what? Is that a fact? Wait... They spent half a billion on a MMO and they have no regional servers? Hahahahaha. Oh, wow.
Before the game launched, they said that people in other countries would experience lag issues due to the locations of the servers. Particularly those in the Pacific rim (Asia, Australia, etc)

-O.K, now Captcha is putting Chinese characters in to it's text puzzles-
 

Carnagath

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008Zulu said:
Carnagath said:
008Zulu said:
Right now all the servers are based in America
Wait, what? Is that a fact? Wait... They spent half a billion on a MMO and they have no regional servers? Hahahahaha. Oh, wow.
Before the game launched, they said that people in other countries would experience lag issues due to the locations of the servers. Particularly those in the Pacific rim (Asia, Australia, etc)
How does that make any sort of sense? Even F2P Korean MMO's have Asian, European and American servers, and TOR doesn't? And people from Europe actually bought this game and are playing with 300-500 ms? (that was my latency when I was playing WoW beta on the US beta servers). This just blows my mind. That's like spending half a nation's budget to build the biggest spaceship ever made, but fueling it with twigs and toilet paper. Oh, EA.
 

mdqp

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IT'S (WAY) OVER NINE THOUSAAAAAAAAAND!!!! (sorry, I had to write it, since no one else did it already)

Seriously, though, it seems too big of a number for it to be true. I am not saying that development and advertising didn't cost a lot of money, but it would be really hard to break even, and taking such a risk sounds weird, considering it's EA we are talking about (maybe I am biased, but I see EA as a company who would NEVER take such risks...). Does anyone knows the numbers for other MMOs that tried to be the next WOW, to use as a reference?
 

Darth_Dude

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I don't believe this number at all, this so-called analyst pulled this straight out of his ass...
 

008Zulu_v1legacy

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Carnagath said:
How does that make any sort of sense? Even F2P Korean MMO's have Asian, European and American servers, and TOR doesn't? And people from Europe actually bought this game and are playing with 300-500 ms? (that was my latency when I was playing WoW beta on the US beta servers). This just blows my mind. That's like spending half a nation's budget to build the biggest spaceship ever made, but fueling it with twigs and toilet paper. Oh, EA.
I can't even find it for sale here in Australia; EB, JB and Game all came up empty. If they threw up a few region servers then they might, might, break even in a few years. Otherwise it will be at least 10 years minimum and by then they new MMOs will be in full swing and ToR will have been long forgotten.
 

Hoplon

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Mar 31, 2010
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Hammeroj said:
Nothing about TOR looks like a 500 million dollar game. On WoW, over ten years of development, Blizzard hasn't yet spent 200 million. What did they spend it on, voice actors?
Blizzard only passed 100 mill last year in costs for wow.

Another "analyst" pulling numbers from his ass, most expensive game for EA is a non information statement since no one knows how much they have spent on games, £50 million is probably pushing in to the very very high numbers for a game.
 

Nimcha

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Carnagath said:
008Zulu said:
Right now all the servers are based in America
Wait, what? Is that a fact? Wait... They spent half a billion on a MMO and they have no regional servers? Hahahahaha. Oh, wow.
Nope, not true. The European servers are actually in Europe and have no lag due to regional issues.
 

BrotherRool

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500 million/2 million subscribers =$250 = what? £140... hmmm I guess if they can keep their subscriber base stable that'd begin edging into profit territory surprisingly quickly
 

Combustion Kevin

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Omnific One said:
Hey, maybe if this fails and EA gets annoyed, they might try to sell Bioware. And you know a company with a ton of investment capital? Bethesda. That would be a dream come true.
you kidding me?
I'm keeping my fingers crossed for Valve.
 

Something Amyss

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Dec 3, 2008
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I'd like to know how he got to those numbers.

DVS BSTrD said:
Well it's all in Angry Joe's hands now, because we all know how expediently Yahtzee gets around to reviewing MMOs.
Yeah, the fanboy praise he will give this title will likely help subsidise EA for a while.
 

mad825

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BrotherRool said:
500 million/2 million subscribers =$250 = what? £140... hmmm I guess if they can keep their subscriber base stable that'd begin edging into profit territory surprisingly quickly
Maybe. You forgot one thing, the supposed $500 million is a starting cost. What's the actual running cost SWTOR?