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Star Wars: The Old Republic: EA Takes On Publishing Duties
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
EA has announced that it will take on all publishing, marketing and distribution tasks related to Star Wars: The Old Republic. Prior to this announcement, LucasArts had held those rights. According to Bioware CEO Ray Muzyka, it's a back end change that won't have any obvious implications for players.
EA and Lucasfilm Ltd, announced today an updated global publishing agreement for the highly anticipated massively multiplayer online videogame Star Wars: The Old Republic. With this new agreement, certain publishing, marketing and distribution responsibilities previously designated to LucasArts will shift to EA, so that all publishing, marketing and distribution responsibilities can be centralized for efficiency. Lucasfilm will continue serving as a key partner, collaborating on design and marketing, and as a licensor of the property. Star Wars: The Old Republic is designed to redefine the MMO category by introducing BioWare's signature storytelling and rich, emotional human performances to the genre. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Read more at Joystiq.
Comments
So much for this game then EA will whine and cry and demand it then it'll be as unfinished to start with as their other games. After all they did Such a good job at Publishing APB
EA is just the publisher, they will have very little effect on the development path... BIO and Lucas film are big, EA will not beable to push them around...
Hope so because if EA screws ONE more thing up I'll telling Al Qaeda it's a major economic center that would be a harsh blow to america anything I could do to tempt them into car bombing it in the middle of the night.
They've just been gargantuan pains in the rear here the last decade.
Sad that they slipped down the path of the Evil Giant Corporation instead of the cool company that produces all the neat sports games and some other nifty titles.
LucasArts has been known to push developers to release before products are finished as well. So it really doesn't make a difference if it's LA or EA.
Playing: Eve, LoL
Played: EQ, SWG, EQII, MxO,DDO CoX, WoW, & LoTRO
Awaiting: GW2, Rift, Earthrise, TOR
LucasArts seems to push off responsibility of the games to the publishers, like the pushed SWG to Sony online entertainment....not saying anything like that is possible with this game, but lucasarts never seems to want to stay involved in a game to a serious degree, just at arms length with their name in the title screen.
One of the primary implications, noted in the Joystiq article, is that EA will handle Customer Service for SWTOR. This doesn't displease me. In fact EA's "Customer Service" seems to be right up there with that of Blizzard. Hopefully the staff for that will be beefed up prior to the launch. I will not be happy if their customer service, post launch, winds up like Funcom was with AoC. (Where I didn't get any response to my tickets for 6 weeks!)
Its not as if this will change anything
I used to visit this site a lot however in recent years it has become the home of negative forum posts, illogical opinions and tantrums so I visit less often.
Played or Beta'd: UO / DAOC / Horizons / EQ2 / DDO / EVE / Archlord / PirateKingsOnline / Tabula Rasa / LOTRO / AOC / Champions / Darkfall / Mortal Online / DCUO / Rift / STO / SWTOR / TSW
this.
Since the could not get soe to due it due to all the hate they had to go with somebody.
Im not happy with the EA choice either.
Oh well.
Wow. Really? Did everyone suddenly forget that EA owns Bioware already? This really shouldnt be a surprise to anyone.
That's because Lucas Arts is primarily only collecting a licensing fee. They expect the developer and publisher to know what they're doing. Of course, some times this works out better than others (witness the dreaded NGE of SWG).
It's all good, as long as the prouct is actually available.
Our friends in Australia / New Zealand can tell the tale better...
Not a big deal. Bioware is already a subsidary of EA anyway.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yblUDD2INjQ
EA's "Customer Service" is utter GARBAGE! - case in point the game Saboteur. EA closed the doors on Pandemic Studios(the developers) just prior to launch of the game and ignored repeated requests on the game's forum asking for patches to fix major bugs in the game (that still exist as a write this) despite some of the development team still working under EA on other projects. NOW they've DELETED the forum and are trying to bury all references to any issues with it whilst STILL selling a broken game around the world and STILL promoting it on the EA site.
http://www.ea.com/games/the-saboteur
THIS IS BAD NEWS.
DEFINITION OF REALITY: Graphics ok, Sound ok, Gold drops need more work...