Speaking at Electronic Arts’ third-quarter conference call to investors, CEO John Riccitello declared that the publisher’s upcoming MMORPG Star Wars: The Old Republic has the ability to be profitable with just 500,000 subscribers.
While he said the number is "not the sort of thing we would write home about,"it would make the game "substantially profitable."
"Anything north of one million subscribers is a very profitable business," Riccitello continued. "Essentially it turns on a dime from being quite sharply negative in terms of its EPS impact to positive the day the product ships."
Though he stated earlier in the report that the game has brought about "significant development costs," Riccitello claimed that rumors from the press and a very angry former EA developer that the game’s budget is somewhere around $300 million are just plain wrong.
"There’s been a fair amount of talk on various blogs, describing spends that are vastly higher than anything we’ve ever put in place," stated Riccitello. "Some of them, they bring a chuckle but they also bring a frustration for those that are being responsible in the management of EA’s R&D dollars when they read sort of falsehoods out of the press."
Star Wars: The Old Republic is believed to be set for a September 2011 release, though there is no official announcement from either EA or BioWare just when this year the game will arrive.
