Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ Due After July 1st, 2011

Arguably, the biggest news out of Boston about TOR in the past few days didn’t come out of PAX East.

If Electronic Arts CFO Eric Brown’s satements at the Lazard Capital Markets Annual Technology & Media Conference in Boston today are accurate, Star Wars™: The Old Republic™ won’t be hitting store shelves (electronic or otherwise) any time before July 1st, 2011.

The fine chaps over at Darth Hater have filed a report based on information learned today during a financial presentation:

Eric Brown: So we said it’s going to launch sometime in calendar, but not within Fiscal 11. So that basically pens down between you know, April 1st and December 31st of this calendar year. It’s also reasonable to infer that it’s not in our Q1 guidance.

This means that the soonest we could see TOR is on July 1st, the beginning of EA’s fiscal second quarter.

So what does this mean for fans who are chomping at the bit to play?

I think it’s important to remember 2011 is BioWare’s target for release. You’ve now got a solid 6 month window for the release. And I don’t think there’s any more time you need to spend thinking about it than that – it’s coming out this year.

The report also quotes EA’s Brown on aspects of Game Testing:

The next phase will be to expand the beta testing. Up until now it’s been kind of the EA friends and family kind of testing program. We need to expand the testing universe to make it more open scalability, back-end systems, etc. Figure out concurrency etc. Where there are choke points on different maps etc., tune it accordingly. We will be increasing the beta.

Head on over to DH for the full transcription of the call as it pertained to The Old Republic, or you can also head over and listen to the audio for yourself right here. (Registration required.)