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EA / BioWare Reconfims 2011 Launch
harvest151
Member UncommonPosts: 217
Courtesy Darth Hater
Looks like no offical push backs or delays to 2012 as many have guesstimated. Looks like time is now of the essence.
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Electronic Arts CFO Eric Brown today reaffirmed Star Wars: The Old Republic will release in calendar year 2011 / ERTS financial year 2012 in a presentation at the Credit Suisse Annual Technology Conference. Click here to listen to the broadcast and the accompanying presentation is also available.
"The biggest part of our portfolio next year will be the launch of Star Wars: The Old Republic," Brown said before entering the Q&A session.
UPDATE: ALA GAMASUTRA
EA: Star Wars: The Old Republic Not Coming Before April 2011 by Kyle Orland
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November 30, 2010 |
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  Electronic Arts confirmed today that its highly anticipated, Bioware-developed Star Wars MMO, The Old Republic, will be released some time in the company's 2012 fiscal year, which starts in April, 2011. Speaking at the Credit Suisse 2010 Technology Conference, which Gamasutra listened in on, EA CFO Eric Brown said this was the first time the company had gone on record with this target ship date for the game. In a May presentation, Brown said the game was "not expected" in fiscal 2010, but today's statement was much more definitive about the release timing, placing it sometime in the nine-month window encompassed by the 2012 fiscal year and the 2011 calendar year. The newly confirmed release timing doesn't necessarily conflict with a "spring 2011" release target posted by former Bioware Community Leader Sean Dahlberg on The Old Republic's official forums in January. It does, however, seem to eliminate the possibility the game will see a release in the first quarter of the 2011 calendar year, as some still hoped. First announced in late 2008, EA has said The Old Republic is the largest project in the company's 28 year history, as measured by the total amount spent on development. Earlier this month, EA took over all publishing and distribution duties for the game, which it had previously been sharing with LucasArts. |
Comments
Updated. 6:28pm -5GMT 11/30
I hope that it is indeed a '11 launch. Its kind of like two block busters movies coming out at different times.CATA is your first block buster movie and of course TOR is the second. Blizz knows that TOR will be competition for CATA so they feel that it is as good as it gets for a Dec release. Bio on the other hand prob wants TOR to be better then it gets when they realese it. So I would rather wait for the better game then play some what is it now WoW is over 6 years?? anyways then play some sequel to a once good game.
Movie reference will be Star Wars IV vs Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Star wars being the victor of course.
UPDATE 7:12 pm
Stephen Reid Responds to Recent Official Forum Chatter
by Orionark
, posted November 30th, 2010 at 6:37 PM
A recent post on the official forums has been the focus of debate, stemming from two recent articles in Gamestar Magazine. BioWare Online Community Manager Stephen Reid responded to a few points from the articles, specifically regarding open world PvP and NPC diversity. Read the full quote from Stephen after the jump.
In "Latest GameStar issue casts shadow over SWTOR", Stephen Reid said:
There are some inaccuracies in the initial reporting here, which could have happened for any number of reasons - but in the interest of calming speculation, there are a couple of things we wanted to address.
First, regarding PvP, so far we've been focusing on the instanced Warzones in our initial reveals, but that is not the only form of player vs player gameplay in The Old Republic. We'll have more to announce in time.
Second, regarding the Flesh Raiders, and mobs in general. In the build shown at the press event, we told the assembled press that one particular Flesh Raider model was being repeated in that build, but that the final game would have a variety of Flesh Raider models. In fact, you got a sneak peek at concept art for those models in last week's Studio Insider.
In addition, there are a number of different creatures, droids and enemies of various types on Tython (and on every world you'll be adventuring on). They're all over the world.
Third and finally, remember that this was a preview event focused on early gameplay. As Game Testing progresses, and as we conduct more press events, the continuing development of the game is going to be highlighted; changes are inevitable.
I would rather have march as launch date , but i understand they want to finish polishing the game .
Guess this will coincide with cataclysme boredom period set in , cause of the raid grind .
1 month offtarget with my speculations .
But we shall see , so far its puts the release in the schedule 7 month zone atmost earliest 5 month (inlcuding december)
giving them 20 weeks to reveal all or max 35 weeks to reveal all advance classes.
Endgame philosophy and gameplay issues .
Will probably be mid to late 2011.
EA/Bioware have Dragon Age 2 and Mass Effect 3 to dish out in the meantime. They're not going to overlap any of these titles, for financial outlook purposes.
DA2 is slated for March 8; ME3 will probably be their summer blockbuster title.
So expect late 2011, imho.
"Will be released some time in the company's 2012 fiscal year, which starts in April, 2011."
Expect an April 2012 release, and dont be disappointed. No harm no Foul.
No this is something really crucial in mmo´s once cataclysme is getting stale and boring.
Releasing your MMO on right time can net you a lot of profit ,from disgrunted disillusioned gamers.
It has nothing to do with singelplayer .
The timing is the most important factor in MMO´s release date , releasing a MMO during cataclysme is sure a fail release date.
You are competiting with the biggest MMO outthere and sure thing for failure , when your product is not even rated .
Timing is key in MMO history , releasing a product cause some people cant wait , is proven to be sure sign of failure especially when it takes a lot of polishing for it to even compete with other products.
They are gambling big on this MMO , and missing the release time cause of other product might come back to haunt them.
That is true of course but if they want to move anything that is actually ready for release then moving back ME3 would make more sense. Moving back TOR (if in fact the game is ready for release of course) would cost a lot of money, say 3 months 15 bucks fees from all the players, that is not peanuts for a MMO.
My guess is that they release it either in may but a lot more likely in the last week of august.
They could of course also keep their eye on the competition, releasing the same month as Rift or Guildwars 2 would probably not be the best alternative either.
But of course the game can still be delayed, I would not be the least surprised if they move it to just before X-mas, but the reason for that would be due to delays. MMOs often get problems and get delayed, sometimes at the last moment.
Well, yes and no. Marketing 2 launches at the same time is a lot of hard work so you should still expect at least 3 weeks between them anyways.
But you are right, timing is important of course. There are at least 3 other large game releasing in 2011. GW2 and Rift are probably the 2 most dangerous and releasing at the same time as one of them can be costly, probably for both games.
Tera might also pose a bit of threat but I don't think Bioware worries about it, and TSW is so different I think it wont matter this way. There is of course also the incredible small chance that WoDO actually releses in time (they said Q4 2011 a looong time ago and we have heard nothing more but most of us assumes it will be later, probably at least a year).
So the ultimate thing for everyone is if they releases with 2 months in between, but it is hard to time that since no one actually know when any of the games releases even themselves.
Loke its SCI FI the mmo genre on SCI is so low , tell me last time you gotten a polished really good sci fi ?
Tabula Rasa tried , but honestly it wasnt polished .
If this game was fantasy setting , it would have been huge , but cause its SCI FI it will hit a smaller market already.
Example this game i wont be able to convince my Friends to play cause its SCI FI .
So missing the boat and que on the release date is really crucial , since the genre itself is smaller .
You release it when a hot SCI FI single player game comes out , it hurts more then ever on this game .
But more important to me is that it finally offers a alternative to wow , cause domination of wow has lasted too long.
Oh About rift i think they will be ready to launch in march or febuari , depending on the mood swings.
If the game is polished enough , it will succeed but truth is i am bored of fantasy settings .
No harm to rift i think i would have been more excited if it was the sci fi rfit with the dogboys cyborgs etc .
But they choose the sure way to success .
I hope they can deliver , really do .
Nicely put.
IF only.......
This is good news. Instanced warzones PvP looks well made and can be fun but what i really like to have is open world PvP. I love it and frankly i can't imagine a SW MMO without giving players the option to engage the opposite faction outside a warzone. If Bioware does not give us this i am going to be greatly disappointed.
And NO, open world PvP is not about ganking. Ganking is just a by-product.
I would have to disagree with this characterzation. Star Wars transends sci-fi nerdom and hits millions of gamers. It is a franchise that, while set in a science fiction genre, is much more than that and by name alone will attract people that would otherwise look down their noses at a science fiction MMO. If it represents the Star Wars ethos well it will do well, if not it will not do well.
There was a lot of talk, and I believe some form of official announcement, that SWTOR was due for a Spring 2011 launch. 'Spring' now seems to be out of the mix - simply because they don't mention it any more - and, as has already been mentioned, FY2012 does stretch all the way to April 2012. The new change in emphasis does seem to suugest that development isn't going as smoothly as planned - though, that said, there never was an MMO whose launch date wasn't put back at least three or four times during development.
It won't be launched before april. This game is vaporware.
http://massively.joystiq.com/2010/12/01/ea-confirms-the-old-republic-wont-be-launched-before-april-2011/
do you know what vaporware is??? your post gives the impression otherwise.
Your comment is just as speculative as the date they provided to begin with. How do you know that a stretch in the date means something is not going smoothly? Maybe they decided to add additional requirements or increase the scope of the game based on feedback and that integrating these enhancements that were not part of the original requirements will require extra time? Regardless, not saying Spring does not mean it wont be Spring...though I agree with you that based on prior MMOs I wouldnt be suprised if it was pushed back. Better that than a Star Trek experience of rushing a game to meet a date.
There Is Always Hope!
Quote: Electronic Arts confirmed today that its highly anticipated, Bioware-developed Star Wars MMO, The Old Republic, will be released some time in the company's 2012 fiscal year, which starts in April, 2011.
So what they are telling us is it will launch between April 2011 - April 2012.
aka: winter of 2011
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
Nah, a much larger closed beta went out recently. I am predicting July - August time frame. I do think that they will miss spring thou (ala April to June).
They have yet to remove the target date as spring 2011 in the official forums, until they do it suggests to me that they are still on track for that target. People have been so focused on the month of March as a release that when they see this news they think the date has been pushed back, but nobody has suggested any such delay. Could it be pushed back? Certainly, but I believe people are jumping the gun in suggesting it already has been. None of the news that has been released in any way discounts a spring 2011 release, which goes on thru the month of June. So even if they release as late as June, they have still hit their targeted release.
I'm not a big fan of target dates. They tend to bring false hope and nerdrage.
Investors love them though.
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
Nothing new here. Both the TOR forum since January and EA quarterly reports since Feb have said the game wasn't launching this EA fiscal year, which ends Mar 31st 2011. The only thing somewhat noteworthy is that recent interviews no longer say "spring 2011", but simply "2011". Not many MMOs launch summer months, so I'd guess if the game misses the spring launch, we won't see it until at least Sept, and TBH I expect a delay until that time. Have there been any good MMOs that weren't delayed?
We know it may not be going smoothly because of industry background chat, like the receant EALouse blog, and because of the late addition of features that seem shallow and improvised, like the rail shooter space element.
Both EA and LA are driven by their marketing departments which are crazy for demanding products be released for holiday markets or to support related IP product launches. I am thinking that if they miss their desired spring 2011 slot, they'll wait for a Christmas 2011 launch.