There have been rumours circulating around that Star Wars: The Old Republic may not have been living up to the expectations of Electronic Arts' internal estimations. The game was pegged by many within the gaming as the World of Warcraft killer, and when Blizzard released their quarterly results it seemed like that could have been the case. However, analysts are back-pedalling on Star Wars: The Old Republic's potential World of Wacraft kill capacity.
Originally the former, alleged EA viral marketer claimed that EA was going to be scaling down their marketing workforce here in North America because Star Wars: The Old Republic and Mass Effect 3 did not meet internal sales/subscriber expectations. Cowen and Company analyst Doug Creutz seems to concur with the viral marketer.
In a brief article report from Ars Technica, Creutz points out that EA's estimate of 1.7 million subscribers could be a little further off from the actual amount as time goes on, pointing to calculated estimates and TOR Status as reason to believe that the subscriber base may be a couple of hundred thousand players shy of that 1.7 million mark.
According to the Ars Technica article, Creutz looks at a lot of anecdotal data from within the community (although, forums, chat rooms and community websites make up for a small and dedicated gaming minority for most games and MMOs) and continually sees the same problem arising of people talking about losing guilds, groups and raiding parties due to people dropping out and quitting.
If that seems a little flaky, though, Creutz also points to the aggressive marketing campaign EA recently put into hyper-drive offering all sorts of incentives and events for playing The Old Republic, such as the free game time and free pet, amongst other promotions.
Before this time there were claims that there were more servers than necessary and that said servers have been plagued with barrenness, as reported by Zo Knows Gaming. So Creutz isn't the only one who has come to this précis.
However, the report isn't all about doom and gloom, the Cowen and Company analyst believes that the numbers are more-so around the 1.25 million subscriber mark for the fiscal year. You can learn more about Star Wars: The Old Republic at the Official Website, and we'll continue to keep you posted on additional news regarding all things Electronic Arts.
