10-year plans are popular this month. First, Ubisoft talked about a decade's worth of intentions for Assassin's Creed, and now Electronic Arts is talking about just as many years for one game — "Star Wars: The Old Republic." The topic came up as EA CFO Eric Brown was addressing his "Old Repulic" outlook at the UBS Annual Media and Communications Conference in New York where expressed hopes that the MMO will last into 2021 (assuming a Spring 2011 release).
"We're shooting for an extremely high quality game experience," Brown said, according to an MCV report. "We view this as a ten-year opportunity."
He also said that EA isn't going to need "World of Warcraft" subscriber numbers in order to make their money back from what's been dubbed one of the the publisher's most expensive projects ever.
"Our assumptions for break-even and profitability are not seven-digit subscribers," he explained. "We think we can run and operate a very successful and profitable MMO at different levels."
"The Old Republic" attracted some unwanted attention back in October from a disgruntled former BioWare employee using the name EA Louse who claimed that it would be "a joke" and a failure when it eventually shipped. With all of the money they've sunk into this MMO, EA's going to need to avoid such a fate if they're going to last past 2020, even with "Star Wars" in its title.
Do you expect to see "The Old Republic" last 10 years? What are you most curious about regarding the game right now? Share your responses with us in the comment section below.