EA claims 1.7m active Star Wars: The Old Republic subscribers

By Fred Dutton Published 1 February, 2012

Plus, Battlefield 3 and FIFA 12 both pass the 10m mark.

Star Wars: The Old Republic currently has 1.7 million active subscribers, publisher EA has announced.

What's more, it's sold through two million copies of the BioWare-developed MMO in a little over a month.

EA's quarterly financial report, out today, also offered updated sales figures for a handful of other recent releases. Both Battlefield 3 and FIFA 12 have passed the 10 million mark, while Madden NFL has racked up five million.

Its Origin store seems to be doing brisk business too. It now has 9.3 million registered customers and has generated more than $100 million revenue since its launch in June last year.

Overall, the publisher reported a sturdy set of numbers for the three months ending 31st December.

"We recorded our highest operating cash flow in 31 quarters and grew segment share in both Europe and North America," said CFO Eric Brown, Chief Financial Officer.

"Third quarter non-GAAP digital revenue grew 79 per cent year-over year, and we achieved our goal of generating over $1 billion in non-GAAP digital revenue on a trailing-12-month basis."

It once again claimed to be the number one publisher "by segment share in Western markets", with its slice of the pie growing by three per cent to 20 per cent in Europe and by one per cent to 17 per cent in North America.

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About Fred Dutton

Fred Dutton is Eurogamer's US news editor, based in Washington DC.

Read more articles from Fred by visiting the Fred Dutton archive page.

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Comments (37) Latest comment 3 weeks ago

  • 16bitworld #1 3 weeks ago

    FIFA fan here good to see it picking up decent sales numbers it means more resources are hopefully put into fixing the numerous gameplay issues for 'next years game' at a quicker rate. It's tough to portray the sport so accurately but I hope they get there soon

  • ChairmanYang #2 3 weeks ago

    This article is a little misleading. EA hasn't said anything about the CURRENT level of active subscribers. Rather, the report (can't link it here) talks about the active subscribers generated as of December 31, 2011, soon after the game's release.

    Not saying the game is doing badly, just that this sort of corporate PR has to be read carefully.
    Edited by 2 at 01/02/12 @ 21:40

  • darkmorgado #3 3 weeks ago

    Hope this shuts up all the mouthbreathing trolls claiming the game is a failure.

  • crsmithy #4 3 weeks ago

    That's a pretty respectable amount of subs for Star Wars, best of luck to them. More big players in the market is a good thing for MMO fans imo.

  • darkmorgado #5 3 weeks ago

    Took WoW over 6 months to reach this number.

    Just saying.

  • ChairmanYang #6 3 weeks ago

    @darkmorgado It shouldn't shut up anyone, because it doesn't say anything about the current level of active subscriptions. Read the actual story on the EA site.
    Edited by 1 at 01/02/12 @ 21:42

  • Srift #7 3 weeks ago

    and whos laughing all the way to the bank...Mr George "show me the money" Lucas.

  • darkmorgado #8 3 weeks ago

    @ChairmanYang

    Well, without knowing the exact numbers, most servers are at "Standard" or "Heavy" populations almost all the day. Chat channels are busy, planet populations are high.

    At 3am the other day, my European server have well over a hundred people on the fleet (equivalent to Stormwind in WoW).

    It's doing perfectly well, and I know quite a few people who have ditched wow to play TOR because they're sick and tired of Azeroth.

  • Eraysor #9 3 weeks ago

    @ChairmanYang When you consider it's only been possible to be an active subscriber for one month (assuming someone in the initial 30 days isn't counted as an active subscriber) then 1.7 million current active is probably true.

    I didn't subscribe after the first month :S

  • king26 #10 3 weeks ago

    Good for Dice. Hopefully Battlefield doesn't go down the same path as CoD, and they'll continue to improve their product and not simply rince and repeat knowing idiots will spend their cash regardless.

  • swills #11 3 weeks ago

    @darkmorgado

    A lot of the reasons WoW had 1.7 million after six months was simply because they ran out of servers for players / physical copies of the game to sell!

    Also WoW was increasing constantly in those months. Let's wait and see if Star Wars increases subscribers consistently over the next six months too.

  • Alivada #12 3 weeks ago

    If it's still 1.7m in 3 months then that's an achievement. But not 10 days after release.

  • pipito #13 3 weeks ago

    so they sold 2.6 mlns kotor copies and already lost 900k ppl in 3 weeks....

  • Dave_McCoy #14 3 weeks ago

    Well, actually I'd say populations are fluctuating. On the fleet station I've noticed 120+ people but down on the planets there's been plenty of times when it's been around 30-50 people or less sometimes. I suppose it's still a few people playing when you times that across 14 planets, people in flashpoints etc. But I've never been in a crowd, or seen one, except when we've took a world boss on.

    This is from a fan of the game by the way. I really enjoy it. I would like to see more players around though.

  • bobfish09 #15 3 weeks ago

    @pipito Better than the industry average, which is about 70% loss in the first four weeks.

  • Laythe_AD #16 3 weeks ago

    Now that i'm at 50 and dealing with top level content, I have to say that while i've enjoyed the game at times, it's never gripped me. I don't see it lasting beyond my first month of paid subscription (second month total). It's just too familiar, and voice acting is no good if the writings that uninspired. It's a solid, well made MMO, but it's more solo-story segments fade constantly into horribly generic mmo-questing and it's never long before it all feels more like work than gaming again.

    In addition to that, the arguable alternative to questing for leveling, flashpoints, are excruciatingly difficult to find groups for after the first three or four. I've no wish to go back to WoW, but this won't hold my attention. Guild Wars 2 for me. The genre needs massive reinvention and that's as fine a start as I can see.

  • FortysixterUK #17 3 weeks ago

    I bought the game.
    I was fairly disappointed by it and unsubscribed on Jan 16th.
    I wish them the best of luck, but 5 load screens to get from one planet to another, with long runs in between, lack of an autogrouping system and a bug that rendered party chat unusable unless you reloaded the game made it a bit of a no go for me.
    Plus, dear god, the Jedi story got fairly dull. I don't think this game was written or designed by the same Bioware that did the first KOTOR game. If it was them, then they dropped the ball.

    Maybe I'll go back in a few months, see if things have improved.
    It's Star Wars, I want to love the game experience and lavish dozens of hours of my time on it.

    As it is, the only two MMO's in existence that have managed that are Everquest and WOW. I still play WOW, and now EQ is going F2P, I'll pop back there for a day or two to check out the scenery.

    Can't say the same for Swtor.

  • sherpa1984 #18 3 weeks ago

    I cancelled my sub- it's the most refined game of the last generation of MMOs, but last-gen nevertheless- and Bioware have been bombarding my e-mail account with automated "Y U NO SUB?" messages ever since.

  • dimasok #19 3 weeks ago

    they're not going to keep these numbers if the game is as buggy and glitchy as it is right now. if you log in to the forum, there are about 1.7 million users complaining about bugs that never get fixed and every patch introduces more and more of them... some of them I encountered myself and that's why i cancelled the subscription until they make the game decently playable.

    On a related note, this whole "80-200 million" budget is overemphasized: most of it went towards voice actors (which nearly everyone skips anyways) and the salaries of the people who worked on the game. This is a FREE game engine so there were no licensing fees even!

    It boggles my mind how a game of such scale could turn out to be as run-of-the-mills and buggy as it has.....

    Now bring on Guild Wars 2 - the true next gen mom (i hope....)
    Edited by 1 at 02/02/12 @ 01:08

  • dimasok #20 3 weeks ago

    @Laythe_AD agree with this. I enjoyed it for what it is and it did introduce SOME novelty (voiceovers+sp stories) but its nowhere near as inventive as something like GW2 which should, let us hold our fingers, reinvent the genre a bit

    TOR is gripping at first but after reaching lvl 44 it felt like work to grind my way to 50 and i didn't want to pay for that grind...
    Edited by 1 at 02/02/12 @ 01:11

  • Shikasama #21 3 weeks ago

    @darkmorgado

    What an utterly ridiculous comment to make. It's pure ignorant fanboy concentrated into eleven words.

    And, as know you to be someone who isn't especially ignorant and only lightly fanboyish I expect you know this.

  • Ares42 #22 3 weeks ago

    @darkmorgado Because it's not like WoW multiplied the potential audiences for MMOs by an insane margin giving all MMOs that has come out after a way bigger potential playerbase than WoW had when it came out, right ?

    I bet if you asked most people that play SwToR today if they were interested in playing an MMO pre-WoW most of them would reply "play a what?"

  • Arsecake_Baker #23 3 weeks ago

    darkmorgado has to be the most hilarious SWTOR fanboy out there!

    I still have the game on my pc but unsubbed, the bugs and framerate problems render it unplayable and of my once 200+ guild only 45 are still playing.

    The game plays far too much like a single player experience, sure there are instances but these feel detached from the gameplay and pvp is an hilarious joke, just watch a few vids!

    I'm no WoW fanboy (gave it up years ago) but WoW had something this does not, and that's a sense of community, at the moment SWTOR is lost in space and the powers that be need to seriously rethink the future, here's hoping that at the guild leader meetings extravaganza some of them have the balls to stand up to EA and not just drip saliva on the carpet!

  • anomagnus #24 3 weeks ago

    Fred, do you understand how financial reporting works? When the CEO of a publicly traded company stands up to make a financial statement to the market, he does more than simply 'claim'. A man in the Sun may 'claim' to have seen elvis in tesco's.

    When a CEO makes gets up to tale to his the board, the markets and his investors, he does not make 'claims'. He states facts as presented to him by his VPs of finance and relevant departments. Claims would imply some sort of doubt, something that isn't actually a fact. Where the company to get up and present its EOQ figures, and get them wrong, well, the markets don't really like that.

    Your choice of words over bioware is fascinating.

    As for SW:TOR fans, i'd always advise caution. This will not shut up anyone that hates the game. They will either accuse EA of lying (!) or say 'watit and see'.

    I made the same bold claims after WAR launched. Look how that turned out.

    I am still enjoying the game though, almost 100 hours played on my sith juggernaut, still only level 42. Looking forward to working on the true end game, the legacy system, and rolling out my entire family!

  • dingo75 #25 3 weeks ago

    @darkmorgado

    WoW didn't launch worldwide however and even tried to shut out European people when it launched in 2004 to avoid being flooded by too many new players (European Credit Cards were not working at first + you had to register with an US or Australian address).
    Afterwards they even pulled / didn't restock the game for a while in shops so they could catch up with players.

    WoW in the first 6 months was no fun and my first char got more or less to 60 with rested XP as we got that as compensation for servers being down / crashing all the time.
    Also got around 2 weeks in free play time as compensation as well.
    They were simply overwhelmed by the amount of players which they hadn't suspected beforehand.

    TOR did launch worldwide with enough ressources apart from those queues which were nothing compared to WoW's launch.

  • ZuluHero #26 3 weeks ago

    @FortysixterUK Yeah I got bored of the jedi, but I'm loving the Smuggler storyline.

    Im still subbed, but with only 15 levels left to go to reach the cap and the story wrapping up, who knows whats going to happen after another month?

    I think there are going to be a lot of players in the same boat.

    The type of story-driven player the game attracts isn't really interested in "end game grinding".

  • sugarbaron #27 3 weeks ago

    There would be 1 more subscriber if the game was selling for a RRP < £30.

  • afrogeez #28 3 weeks ago

    @darkmorgado Haha you again, are you hired by EA to defend this game in every article on this site?

  • afrogeez #29 3 weeks ago

    @Arsecake_Baker Yea that guy is hilarious, every SWTOR article has him defending it.

    Anyway the bugs didn't bother me that much, just the hollow experience, i also didn't play past the 30 days and no i haven't gone back to WoW.

    At first SWToR was "ooh new shiny" but a few weeks you look back and think "this really isn't that great, and it really isn't worth a monthly fee". Just my opinion.

  • anomagnus #30 3 weeks ago

    @afrogeez

    In fariness to darkmorgado, i doubt EA would be keen on paying him. He's fond of SW:TOR, but he's torn ME a new asshole...

  • benjerry #31 3 weeks ago

    SWTOR cured me of MMO burnout, we´ll see how long it lasts. A lot of content in the game though, and I kind of enjoy the PvP. It still has some issues though, and I tend to grow bored with MMO:s after some sustained play. We´ll see how it goes. The Legacy system is very clever though, I.e. you get to improve all of your chars on a server at once through a shared XP bar. Grind-tastic!

    Chairman Yang: If you are going to call the figure "misleading", you should have something to back it up with. The text below is from the transcript of the investor conference call:

    "Let me offer some metrics on purchase and subscription that will help you understand this business. As John stated, we have sold through two million units of the game (SWTOR) since December.

    We currently have a little over 1.7 million active subscribers. The rest have either not started playing yet or have opted out."

    Most reasonable interpretations of the above would make it tough to see it as "1,7 million subs soon after launch" (that would also require there to be 300 000 sold-through games that were never used).

    Note that they say that "Star Wars®: The Old Republic™ has generated 1.7 million active subscribers and sold through more than 2 million units in a little over one month." SWTOR launched on Dec 20. If the figures were for Dec 31, it would be pure lying to give sales figures "for a little over one month".

    You can find the above here:

    http:// investor.ea.com/common/download/download.cfm?companyid=ERTS& fileid=539144&filekey=d895626f-e715-4f00-bd50-31bf095027fd&f ilename=Q3_Script_-_20_2112_1251pm.pdf
    Edited by 1 at 02/02/12 @ 13:36

  • benjerry #32 3 weeks ago

    @anomagnus Nah, if you like a game and decline to make up bullshit FUD ("the figures are actually for a week after launch!!22111!), that means you are obviously on the EA (or Activision, natch) Payroll.

    As stated above, I do hope that the trolls choke on their own bile. I hate trolls and haters.

  • SweetMrGibs #33 3 weeks ago

    @benjerry

    Well, I hate that "Fish Food" icecream you make!

    Mind you, it beats Heston's mustard ice cream. I thought "Hmmm. mustard ice cream. Must be more to it." There isn't, it's mustard in vanilla ice cream and it's not pleasant.

    Hnnnnnnnnn.

    Also, Hagen Daas sold 12% more units in my local Tecsos than your particular brand of ice cream, mainly because I bought it to cheer myself up after a particuarly violent - and unproductive - SWTOR levelling session. Sust.

  • benjerry #34 3 weeks ago

    @SweetMrGibs That´s a vile and deceptive corporate lie - the 12% figure only covers the period of 2011-12-01 through 2011-12-03, and completely ignores the estimated impact of our new "Dijon Pickle Dream" flavour that is scheduled to be introduced in Q3 2012.

    Also, cookie dough chocolate chip is where it´s at. There.

  • SweetMrGibs #35 3 weeks ago

    @benjerry

    "Dijon Pickle Dream" you say?

    Colour my balls purple, I'm intrigued!

  • benjerry #36 3 weeks ago

    @SweetMrGibs "Purple Ball Perspiration" is actually something that we are actively looking at for the Japanese market...

  • SweetMrGibs #37 3 weeks ago

    @benjerry

    Do you need a supplier?