Star Wars fans don’t need to be sad when Star Wars: Galaxies gets shut down on December 15, as it will be quickly replaced with another Star Wars MMORPG just a few days after. Sony Online Entertainment has announced the availability of Star Wars: The Old Republic on December 20 and fans can continue playing a massively multiplayer online role-playing game set in the Sci-Fi Universe created by the legendary George Lucas.
Electronic Arts, together with developers BioWare confirmed a fixed Star Wars The Old Republic release date which is to be on December 20 in North America, with the release in Europe to come behind a few days on December 22. Star Wars: The Old Republic has long been proclaimed for a general 2011 release window since June.
EA has said that it will be limiting the number of copies (both digital downloads and retails) to be available during the game’s launch to ensure stability of their servers for the projected surge of connections during the release date. EA has already determined what the limit is to the number of copies to be sold, and it will not be announced in figures. When that limit is reached, EA will be ceasing its digital sales from Origin as they expand server capacity.
The publishers already addressed some issues about profit back in February when it stated that Star Wars: The Old Republic will be “substantially profitable” if it is able to get half a million subscribers, anything above a million users would already make the game very profitable. While analysts have established that, the game will sell roughly a million to 3 million copies during the release day – a figure that might give people an idea to the basis for EA’s limit of the game’s availability on launch day.
