EA previously stated that its upcoming Star Wars based MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic, requires just 500,000 subscribers to be “substantially profitable”. Early beta signups are three times this number according to EA CFO Eric Brown.
“The next phase will be to expand the beta testing,” Brown said. “Up until now, it’s been the EA friends and family testing program. We need to expand the testing universe, make it more open. … The good news is that we have well over a million, closer to one and a half million people registered, opted-in, who are happy to step up and be beta testers. North of a million demand to do some free testing is a great indicator of the interest level in the franchise.”
“If you look at the Western world, so this is North America plus Europe only, we’d estimate there are about 12 million people or so playing one or more MMOs,” he said. “Roughly half are playing World of Warcraft…so there’s 12 million people to go after, 6 million of whom are playing one game and 6 million are playing a combination of other games. And then there’s obviously an opportunity in Asia.” That’s great, except Blizzard announced a little while back that it currently has over 12 million people paying monthly subscription fees to play World of Warcraft.
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