Cowen & Company analyst Doug Creutz has reacted to EA's Star Wars: The Old Republic launch date and pricing plans with sales and subscriber forecasts for the MMO's first year on the market.
Buying a copy will net you a 30-day subscription. Access thereafter will cost $14.99/£8.99/€12.99 per month or $41.97/£25.17/€35.97 for three months, with six months costing $77.94/£46.14/€65.94.
Creutz said in a research note distributed after the announcement: "We are assuming that the title sells through 3MM units in its first year of release, with the subscriber count reaching (and staying level at) 2MM by the end of CY12.
"We note that with the announcement of the title's release date, we have seen pre-order activity for the title reaccelerate," he added.
Fellow analyst Billy Pidgeon, of M2 Research, said this week that Blizzard may use October's BlizzCon to unveil in-development MMO Titan, with the World of Warcraft developer arguably under pressure to deliver something big before the end of the year given that it recently delayed Diablo 3 to 2012.
Comments
5 comments so far...
pRM8 on 28 Sep '11 said:
As long as there are enough people playing for Bioware to continue making content for it then I'll be happy. It doesn't have to do any more than that in my eyes.
KMakawa on 28 Sep '11 said:
Agreed.
FinalBillybong on 28 Sep '11 said:
Well I can report that it has defiantly up their preorder numbers by 1!
jukkiz on 28 Sep '11 said:
Won't stay at 2 million. Around 100-300k after 1st year. If that. Still respectable but nowhere near the numbers BioWare needs to recoup the 300mil it cost to make.
Freemium model around 2012-2013.
KMakawa on 28 Sep '11 said:
Bioware have already said that it doesnt need millions to survive as a subscription based format. They could survive easily at 200K/300K subscribers.