SWTOR could reach one million paying subscribers with DLC like Game Update 1.2

Written by Matt Swider on March 30, 2012

SWTOR News: The SWTOR Game Update 1.2 release is right around the corner, keeping subscribers hooked, which may net the MMORPG a million paying PC gamers.

Star Wars: The Old Republic may be on its way to one million paying subscribers, according to a study from research firm DFC Intelligence and social service for gamers Xfire. This is positive news for the Electronic Arts, BioWare MMORPG at a time when many MMOs in its class have been turning to a free-to-play F2P model to lure in new users. SWTOR's faces competition from newly minted F2P games that include DC Universe Online, Star Trek Online and, most recently EverQuest II. It also faces a challenge from League of Legends, which began as an F2P and continues to gobble up players' time as a popular action RTS.

SWTOR, like Blizzard's dominate World of WarCraft, has the potential to be Уa successful long-term online subscription PC game,Ф according to the report. This is due in part to the high-profile Star Wars name, the game's massive budget and the regular DLC drops including next month's SWTOR Game Update 1.2. This has been the right mixture to hook subscribers, who are paying upwards of $15 a month for access to the game.

УThe current trend among large massively multiplayer online games is to have strong initial sales, after which users quickly lose interest and are not converted to long-term paying subscribers.Ф said DFC Intelligence analyst Jeremy Miller. This is in sharp contrast to the highly successful Activision Blizzard game World of Warcraft, which has maintained a large subscriber base since its release in 2004.

This study consists of survey data of over 4,000 Xfire users from December 20, 2011, which was SWTOR's release date, to February 20, 2012, two months after its launch. Despite the short amount of time, DFC Intelligence defines a long-term subscriber as someone who pays for over six months - even though the game had been out for a third of that time. With that said, the report cautions that the data is still preliminary given the newness of SWTOR. Expect DFC Intelligence and Xfire to be back with more SWTOR stats because, as Miller says, Уthe next three to six months will be critical to determine if the game can attract a large and sustained paying subscriber base.Ф