Electronic Arts Conference Call Transcript About the Upcoming SWTOR
EA's Frank Gibeau and John Riccitiello answered various questions regarding the upcoming SWTOR to the company's investors.
Although we wrote earlier about EA Q1 2012 Earnings Conference Call, finally a full transcript of the talk has surfaced on the internet.
According to Electronic Arts' CEO, John Riccitiello, EA's Origin will become a very popular destination for gamers with the upcoming company's blockbusters, Battlefield 3 and Star Wars: The Old Republic.
EA's administration strongly believes that the company will take a slice of the MMO market with the upcoming BioWare's Star Wars MMO game and expects a huge revenue from subscriptions in the upcoming years.
How EA will manage multiple millions of users in the upcoming SWTOR?
Frank Gibeau: 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.
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? Frank Gibeau:
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.
John Riccitiello: 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.
You said record preorders, could you elaborate on that? Also curious on the beta testers?
Frank Gibeau: Sure, not going to give actual numbers. They are ahead of expecations, largest number that we have done with EA, larger than Battlefield 3. We have about a thousand people in the beta right now, improving the quality on every release. Purchase intent through third-party research is some of the highest they've ever seen. In the summer we're ramping up our beta campaign and through September, then we'll be in a position to give our hard ship date.
John Riccitiello: 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.
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?
John Riccitiello: 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.
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22.05.2012
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