Star Wars: The Old Republic delayed?

By BatRastered — May 5, 2011
Tags: bioware ea news release-date

Not quite, but EA hedges its bets during their investor conference call yesterday.

NOTE: When you see "Fiscal Year" in this story it is referring to the year ending on March 31, 2012.

EA's release to investors stated that:

We are preparing the launch of Star Wars: The Old Republic. The launch date, while in
our fiscal year, is not yet certain. We see roughly $0.15 EPS variability between the
potential launch window

And:

we assume that Star Wars: The Old Republic ships in the calendar year, but our guidance
range accounts for a range of ship dates within the fiscal year

Public companies must recognize any uncertainty, by law, in their investor guidance, so the above is not exactly shocking. To further this point we have this:

While we fully anticipate launching Star Wars: The Old Republic in Q2 or Q3, the low
end of our guidance range assumes the outside possibility of a January launch.

Finally, From Frank Gibeau (President of EA Games) on the conference call we have:

And finally, the biggest event of the year will be Star Wars: The Old Republic -- a jawdropping subscription-based MMO that is captivating critics and fans in the beta test. We
currently have over one million double-opt-in beta testers for the world’s first story-driven, fully
voiced MMO.

Everyone is waiting for us to announce the ship date… Sorry, but that’s not going to happen
today. We’re holding the date for two reasons – first, we don’t want to tip off the competition;
second, we want more data from the beta test to guarantee a spectacular experience at
launch

So, we got a whole lot of nothing on the conference call yesterday. Lots of analysts are speculating that the game will slip to 2012 based on this, but if you read carefully and have listened to this type of thing in the past, this is not what they are saying, though they are acknowledging the possibility.

When do you think The Old Republic will finally ship? Leave a comment and let us know.

Source (PDF): http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/ERTS/1247916273x0x465074/964aa083-eb90-451f-9966-8fd960ce2cfe/Q4_FY11_Script.pdf

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Star Wars: The Old Republic delayed?

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