Some might call this grave-dancing, but me, I call it I told you fucking so.
Yes, SWTOR is underperforming. And contrary to EA claims, its budget may have been well north of the $300 million figure cited by the infamous EALouse. A figure which was sneered at by SWTOR devotees, but which, as I demonstrated long ago, twice, makes it a virtual impossibility for the title to turn a profit for EA, no matter how much magical accounting they do. Because the money spent on it is not actually imaginary.
Even in the MMO blogosphere, we’re starting to hear discontent, and not just from the people, like myself, who never bothered buying it. SWTOR’s first real patch broke level-cap PvP hard, and they’re scrambling to fix it. They are probably working less hard at letting players unsubscribe from the game.
I like Bioware and am rooting for them, but the budget doomed this project the minute it went over $100 million. I still think it’s going to hold on to subscribers better than most new MMOs that launch these days, but EA had better take a hard look at how Trion Worlds worked to keep players in Rift. But it doesn’t really matter. The only people who will be happy with the checks they get are the ones at Lucasarts.
Ardwulf's Lair 