Star Wars: The Old Republic Could Secure One Million Subscribers

GamesIndustry.biz has summarized a report created by market research firm DFC Intelligence that suggests that BioWare Austin’s Star Wars: The Old Republic could wind up with a million long-term subscribers, though they also find that “the next three to six months will be critical” in determining if they meet that milestone.

In a report obtained by GamesIndustry International, the market research firm noted that The Old Republic “has the potential to be a successful long-term online subscription PC game… despite a general decline in high-end subscription game products and growing competition from numerous free-to-play games like Riot Games’ League of Legends, War Gaming’s World of Tanks, and S2 Games’ Heroes of New Earth.”

DFC, which conducted the study in conjunction with Xfire, tracked game usage data from the launch of the MMO on December 20, 2011 through February 20, 2012 and also surveyed over 4,000 Xfire users in January 2012. Based on this data, DFC believes that Star Wars can indeed reach over one million long-term paying subscribers (defined as a subscriber that pays for over six months).

“The 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,” said DFC Intelligence analyst Jeremy Miller. “While early signs are fairly positive, over the next few months the plan is to closely monitor usage and consumer reaction to gauge how well Star Wars: The Old Republic performs over time.”

One million subscribers is great, sure, but you can’t tell me that EA executives haven’t set their sights much higher when World of Warcraft was rocking 12 million subscribers years ago.