Star Wars: The Old Republic sees revenue double after converting to Free-to-Play
Star Wars: The Old Republic, Bioware's iconic sci-fi MMORPG has seen steady growth since going Free-to-Play late last year. SWTOR had been in a free fall after the game's subscribers peaked at 1.7 million in February 2012, falling below 1 million subs by July and prompting EA to convert the game to a F2P model.
Now in a recent earning call between EA and its investors, EA's president of labels Frank Gibeau announced the game had added more than 1.7 million new players since the conversion with subscribers stabilizing at just under half a million. He went on to mention that the game's revenue had "more than doubled" since going Free-to-Play and the company would "continually invest in new content for the service and for players every six weeks or so".
While it's no surprise SWTOR gained a hefty chunk of new players after making the switch, it is a tad bit intriguing to see the game's revenue more than doubled. A large portion of this could perhaps be attributed to the fact that EA has implemented an extremely restrictive F2P model on the MMO, prompting many players to purchase small "convenience" upgrades such as the ability to send mail, hold more credits, unlock a secondary crew skill, access raids, or even have more than just two skill bars.
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About the Author
Michael Dunaway has been part of the MMOBomb team for years and has covered practically every major Free-to-Play MMO title since 2009.
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Those of you who may not be familiar with the MMORPG Arcane Saga may in fact know it by another name.
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As for the idiot posting under several names to be a troll and hate on mmobomb,dude go back to whatever crap site you work for that can't get the same traffic as this site.MMObomb is the best mmo site i have ever came across.Even if it only focuses on the f2p mmos.But seeing how the pay to play mmo model is slowly dwindling towards the inevitable death.Can't blame them for focusing on what is gonna be the industry standard for mmos.Hell even WoW will probaly go f2p one day,especially since there subscriber numbers have been dropping steadily.And before one of the WoW fanboys says,"no it's not!"Look at the numbers activison/blizzard are reporting,They lost another 1.7 million subs in the first quater this year.Unfortunately for anyone that likes WoW expect it to end up like swtor and ddo with huge content restrictions behind pay walls.
every game i seen here and tried out is good well some sucks like SWTOR :( but the rest is awesome~ well keep up the good work spunky, and seriously man just ignore the trolls they're just trying to get attentions ._.
Obviously it is a business and they aim to make money but this KIND of business is the equivalent of dangling the proverbial carrot on the stick in your face except it's a baby carrot; you're starving and you know you want it, but you know it won't fill your stomach. You can't just remove core elements from a game and expect people not to be offend when you put a real-world price on it.
I'm not sure if Bioware spearheaded this idea of removing basic every-day elements or if it was EA's idea but I know for sure that misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows. Like it or not, EA and Bioware are more or less a single entity now, the crooked bastards. As for myself, like many a discerning customer I will speak with my wallet. SWTOR will not see a penny from me and I won't waste my precious bandwidth downloading a product that makes me a second class citizen regardless of how much I pay unless I subscribe.
From all prospective Bioware did it wrong. This is not how ftp model suppose to work. There's very little reason to invest your time in title like this unless u re hardcore fan of series. The game itself may have a flaws here and there but certainly has sort of charm. But its not the point , since even the best game ever would look like garbage with model like this. Sure someone who had learned to copy-paste, may come with this universal answer : `U don't go to the shop and take staff free`. Well, true, but u never want to buy in shop that makes u to pay for entrance and takes fee just for watching, especially in time when near by shops with same, possibly better, content start fire sales.