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Star Wars: The Old Republic Breaks EA Record For Pre-Orders
Hendo0069
Member Posts: 213
According to Electronic Arts reports Q1 FY12 financial results:
Star Wars: The Old Republic Breaks EA Record For Pre-Orders
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Electronic-Arts-Reports-Q1-bw-352589453.html?x=0
Hopefully they can keep the servers from blowing up at launch. See you all at release!
Transcript of the investor call courtesy of Darthhater.com
http://darthhater.com/2011/07/26/electronic-arts-q1-2012-earnings-conference-call/
2:03: John Riccitiello: Strong preorders for The Old Republic.
2:06: JR: "We believe that Origin will scale quickly with the addition of third parties and with the launch of Battlefield 3 and Star Wars later this year."
2:14: Eric Brown: "Star Wars: The Old Republic is targeted to launch in holiday of 2011, but our guidance range accounts for a range of ship dates within the fiscal year."
2:17: EB: "In the second half, we expect to begin seeing a more ratable and profitable P&L based on subscription revenue growth from Star Wars: The Old Republic and leverage from higher unit sales of key owned IP, such as Battlefield 3."
2:19: Principle driver is SWTOR, start the year with development costs, end the year with high margin digital and retail profits.
2:24: JR: - speaking about Fiscal year 2012 - "It is about some explosive programs and tangible objectives which will mark FY12 as a positive inflection point for EA. Among the most exciting are these: We will launch Star Wars: The Old Republic and compete for a big slice of the MMO market.
2:26: Q&A session starting.
2:29: Question on capacity management in SWTOR? EB: We're in good shape to do that, we have the ability to scale for multiple millions of users. We're looking at stuff coming in as far as marketing and pre-order promotion. We have a lot of capacity to do that.
2:31: Q: What do you view the size of the MMO market? Is this something we can look for after the fact in terms of modeling and how preorders have gone? EB: On the next call we'll be briefing you in detail on how that has gone. As far as the first, it's a big opportunity for us in both the west and europe. It's a category that hasn't seen a lot of releases that has a lot of potential demand. Response on preorders indicated demand. JR: Our internal judgement shows in the double digit millions of subscribers. In order how to frame the business model, these are complex, you need information on lifetime of the users, churn rates, ect. We have framed this in prior discussions, half a million subs it breaks even, at a million it will make money but doesn't feel good on investment, anything north of a million starts to look like a great investment and makes our value judgement in the investment in the property through BioWare a very good one. We gave that same framework previously. Interested to see our games distributed anywhere and everywhere we are.
2:49: Q: You said record preorders, could you elaborate on that? Also curious on the beta testers? EB: Sure, not going to give actual numbers. They are ahead of expecations, largest number that we have done with EA, the next closest title was Battlefield 3 and it was up from there. We have about thousands people in the beta right now, improving the quality on every new release. Purchase intent through third-party research is some of the highest they've ever seen. In the summer we're going to be ramping up our beta campaign and by around the time we get to September, we'll be in a position to call the ball and give the hard ship date.
2:54: JR: Seeing good revenue flow through from Origin. Origin is being heavily adopted, seeing similar numbers to Steam. Our hope was to get through preorders for SWTOR without falling over and the team nailed the technology we needed for it.
2:59: Q: Regarding the Star Wars launch date, some idea of range of impacts depending on the launch date of the game, will there be any contribution later? JR: Focus is strongly on Q3 but maintained the guidance range. We have high expectations for the potential for the product, we want to be able to, if there's an issue to change the ship date. We're focused on driving hard towards Q3, until something is certain we're not announcing it. 4-8 weeks before launch is typical for a hard ship date.
Update:
"We're well over 200,000 pre-orders in the first five or six days. From an EA perspective, that is significantly greater than any other EA title we've ever had in the first week," said the company's finance chief, Eric Brown, in an interview.
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/eas-quarterly-revenue-falls-beats-estimates-202510568.html
Comments
From what I've heard they are doing a rolling launch, so the earlier a player pre-ordered (and entered their code I believe) the earlier they get in. So servers shouldn't blow up, but the forums probably will.
I wouldnt mind that
, i pre-ordered 6 hours after release !
Cant wait to explore this game.
They also mentioned in the call that they have the capacity to handle multiple millions of initial subscribers at launch and they have the ability to quickly add servers to increase capacity.
Yeah, it does seem like they are taking every precaution to insure a smooth launch.
A problem that most gaming companies would kill to have.
No fear, SoE always has excess server capacity to rent out. Yes, SoE can actually get positive income from shutting down SWG.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
It doesn't actually mention SWTOR breaking records in that report. The report is for Q1 that ended before pre-orders and the pre-orders would not be included financially in that report.
I'm guessing that it was something said to the investors during a conference call. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that it has broken records for being the fastest pre-ordered game by EA, but still hasn't broken the record for most sales of a pre-order prior to launch. I could be wrong though.
I did find it weird that it wasn't part of the actual report, but right under where it says "Electronic Arts Reports Q1 FY12 Financial Results" in grey the exact quote is "Star Wars: The Old Republic Breaks EA Record For Pre-Orders"
'BioWare's first MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic, just went on pre-order last week, but it has already broken EA’s all-time record for pre-orders.'
Clicky
Goodbye WoW , it was a nice run! While I am suprised TOR is seeling like hotcakes, I'm really not suprised because it is Star Wars. Lets hope for a good launch.
LoL.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
OP updated with transcript of investor call.
Glad I bought my DDE and registered my code about 12 hours after they went on sale.
I would have gotten a CE but they were all gone by then.
Have a sense of humor, no need to get ALL MODDY !
A Simpson's quote shouldn't be worth a warning. You are lucky anyone is bothering to read this rag.
I did the same thing when I got up the next morning.
7 million pre-orders? Isn't that a world record instead of an EA record?
Wow this is impressive. Congrats Bioware.
In Bioware we trust!
Very impressive indeed!
I think we heard the rumor early in the day. So many went to bed on the TOR forums. I kept checking origin and was very surprised when it came up that i could order. got CE and 2 minutes later my code. so going to be a good launch. People at blizzard must be making a run to the choppas and you can bet many latenight blizzard meetings are going on now.
It starting to look like the king of MMOs is about to get pwned.
Ok...now will you please let me preorder?? I am from a small country of Serbia, have mercy..
"To be a rock and not to roll..."
Where was the 7 million figure derived?
I really hope they can get the launch right somehow. I'm hoping that we won't see the dreaded que or "Sorry, servers crashed".
Guild Wars 2's 50 minutes game play video:
http://n4g.com/news/592585/guild-wars-2-50-minutes-of-pure-gameplay
Everything We Know about GW2:
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/287180/page/1
"We're well over 200,000 pre-orders in the first five or six days. From an EA perspective, that is significantly greater than any other EA title we've ever had in the first week," said the company's finance chief, Eric Brown, in an interview.
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/eas-quarterly-revenue-falls-beats-estimates-202510568.html
But... if they give us enough servers at launch, in a few weeks once everyone's calmed down a bit and isn't playing 18 hours a day, there will be empty servers and people will be complaining that the game is failing!I think by people confusing the sales numbers of Bad Company 2 with the preorder numbers of Battlefield 3, which are not the same thing. All Ea has said of Battlefield 3 is that PREORDER NUMBERS are massively higher than those of Bad Company 2, not that Battlefield 3 has millions of preorders.
Then people take the SWTOR should scale with Battlefield 3 comment out of context as well and think "Ooh 7 million preoders whoopie!!"
It would be a bit similar to people seeing McDonalds "99 Billion Served" on the restaurant sign and thinking that means JUST THAT LOCATION.
Anyway while I'm pretty sure that while SWTORs preorders are quite good, they are not in the multiple of millions.
"Gypsies, tramps, and thieves, we were called by the Admin of the site . . . "
I just wanted to call out the misinformation. I've seen that the numbers exceed 200,000 pre-orders according to Reuters.
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/eas-quarterly-revenue-falls-beats-estimates-202510568.html
Imagine how well pre-orders could have done if they had not decided to exclude the entire southern hemisphere & several parts of Europe from the game....... with no information on when or if these other regions will have access.
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