Today marks the official launch of EA & BioWare’s Star Wars: The Old Republic, a day some took off, but a day that many still have to work on. Analysts have been wondering if EA's expensive experiment would prove profitable, with Cowen & Company’s Doug Creutz keeping a close eye on the game.
Creutz checked the game’s server list on December 14 to find a total of 106 servers online. This number rose to 140 on December 17, with 77 of those servers being in the US and 63 being in Europe. As I write this, the number stands at 214 total servers with 123 servers being in North America and 91 being in Europe. Many list ‘Full’, ‘Very Heavy’, or ‘Heavy’ for their server population.
"Based on the number of servers now in operation, and the relatively high densities thereon, we feel fairly comfortable estimating that the game already has in excess of 1 million players, and potentially could have as many as 1.5 million, with the official launch date of the game yet to come,” wrote Creutz.
"We note that EA gives players the first month free, so 'players' does not yet signify paying subscribers; however, our estimate does at least signify the number of people who have bought the game (and thus far, includes only a subset of those who pre-ordered the title).”
"Our (very rough) estimate is based on (1) Star Wars now has 29 percent as many servers in operation as World of Warcraft in North America and Europe; (2) the average player density (relative to server capacity) on the Star Wars servers appears higher than it is on World of Warcraft; and (3) we estimate that World of Warcraft has around 4.0-4.5 million subs in North America/Europe.”
Creutz’s numbers given in his release are based on 140 total servers for SWTOR, compared to World of Warcraft’s 491 servers. With the current numbers, that percentage jumps to 44 percent
"The missing pieces of our analysis are that we do not know the relative capacity of Star Wars vs. World of Warcraft servers, and we do not know exactly what the 'full'/'very heavy'/etc. labels signify. Based on the progress of the launch so far, we continue to feel very comfortable with our FY13 2 million subscriber estimate for Star Wars."
It’s a good start for BioWare, but the real question is: can the developer retain the players it has captured?
[Via CVG]
