Wedbush securities analyst believes Bioware delayed Dragon Age to benefit Star Wars MMO
Michael Pachter believes that Bioware transferred developers from Dragon Age 3 to work MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic.
The Wedbush Securities analyst speaks as EA stocks hit a new low following the news STWOR is already losing subscribers, and it seems the MMO may have cost EA more than investors.
"Dragon Age III appears to have slipped to FY:14," Pachter told Games Industry International.
"We had previously expected the next Dragon Age to be released in Q4:13, two years after its predecessor. However, we believe that a significant portion of the BioWare team responsible for the game was reassigned to Star Wars in order to create content and fix bugs to keep the game's audience engaged."
Despite worries that subscribers have already dipped to 1.3 million- a 23 percent loss- EA remains adamant that STWOR is profitable.
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With the delay of another key franchise, the publisher may be in for worse than lost subscriptions, though Pachter is adamant that things will turn out well for EA.
"We remain incorrigibly positive on the EA story," he said.
"Despite a relatively low number of packaged good releases this year, we expect EA to grow revenue and earnings," he added, citing strong growth in the company's digital sector.
EA is literally insane at this point and committing suicide.
This just confirms ToR is dead, even Bioware know it. They're desperately trying to salvage what little is left of swtor.
Goodbye EA. Trying to kill WoW with a game that (incredibly) was more boring and repetitive. Both games will fail soon enough.
Bioware/EA took a huge amount of cash and then set out to copy WoW. Gamers want innovation not WoW clones. They deserved to fail and now they have failed.
Tor is a great game, but BW will have to keep releasing large amounts of content every 4 months for them to retain subs. Without good character customization, server mergers, a group finder tool, they with be hard pressed to keep people. Too bad, because I think it's a great game, but there is not enough story/mission content to keep me interested past level 50. Server mergers and a group finder tool would help a lot thought.
