E3 2011 – EA Analyst Event

Earlier this morning, Electronic Arts held an analyst event here in Los Angeles during E3. While it covered questions on full gamut of EA’s portfolio, TOR is obviously a large potential revenue stream going forward.

EA’s CFO Eric Brown talked a bit about how the company’s financial performance will be much higher at the end of fiscal 2012 with TOR in full-swing. In addition, he confirmed that TOR will only be available as a digital download via EAʼs brand new digital-distribution platform Origin.

For TOR fans, the meat of the call was a presentation on Star Wars: The Old Republic delivered by BioWare Co-Founders Dr. Ray Muzyka and Dr. Greg Zeschuk.

Muzyka discussed BioWareʼs priority focus on SW:TOR and worded the target goal as:

… to combine the most powerful IP in the form of LucasArts with the power of EA and the quality of BioWare to build sustainable success.

Ray went on to list many reasons why “SW:TOR will be awesome” – story and characters, choice that matters, epic, heroic combat, PvP and PvE, exploration of fantastic new worlds and space. All this inspired by iconic locations from the movies. Personalized progression to advance through your class.

After his short presentation, the latest gameplay trailer was shown and his partner in crime Dr. Greg Zeschuk took the stage to talk about the guiding principles that were used in building the SW:TOR.

He also talked about player retention strategy, outlining it in three steps:

1. Delivering a great game
2. Delivering a great service
3. Continuing to deliver content

Finally, Greg talked about beta testing, noting that over a million users are already signed up, and thousands of players already participated in beta, which is more than enough to fill BioWareʼs testing needs. He also mentioned that most of the information about beta testing is still under the NDA, but as we get closer and closer to launch, more information will be revealed.

Greg ended his presentation with the following sentence:

The game is on track to launch in quality and thatʼs all we got, thank you.

You’ll be able to listen to the call for yourself once EA posts it here. You can currently download the accompanying slide presentation there as well.