EA Responds to Declining SWTOR Subscription Numbers

The first stage of grief is denial, which seems to be where EA is headed after it released its financial report yesterday revealing that subscription numbers for Star Wars: The Old Republic dropped 23.5% from its peak last quarter.

Active subscribers dropped from 1.7 million to 1.3 million, to which President of EA Labels, Frank Gibeau, responded saying this was due to casual gamers leaving the game.

We brought in a lot of users, and with a brand like Star Wars, it reaches out much past the hardcore MMO fan base into the broader market. And as the service evolves from here, what we’re seeing is that some of the initial casual customers have gone through a billing cycle and decided not to subscribe to the game.

Mr. Gibeau goes on to counter, saying that it’s core is actually growing,

the percentage of paying subscribers from our peak until now has actually gone up, and the folks that we have are as engaged as they were when they first bought the product.

Make no mistake, BioWare intends to grow subscribers.

I don’t believe that Gibeau mentioned to shareholders that EA gave every single player players with a level 50 character a free month of game-time only a few weeks ago. Hmm, I wonder if this 1.3 million number is at all deceptively inflated? I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the real number is already under 1 million.

Also mentioned during the conference call was that SWTOR was in EA’s top 10 franchises in terms of profitability, but was less profitable than the following franchises: Medal of Honor, Battlefield, FIFA, Madden, The Sims, and SimCity. However, it did beat Tiger Woods Golf. This places SWTOR somewhere between 7-9 on the list.

EA is doing what all companies do when they have bad news, put on a happy face and try to explain it away, but casual gamers? I won’t consider anyone that uses Xfire to be casual and from their stats, SWTOR is in serious decline.

28 Comments

  1. Not sure where you got the ” EA gave every single player a free month of game-time” from? You had to have a level 50 but I think that changed to a certain legacy level later. Anyway, that’s still way off every single player.

  2. “but was less profitable then the following franchises; Medal of Honor, Battlefield, FIFA, Madden, The Sims and SimCity, but it did beat Tiger Woods Golf. This places SWTOR somewhere between 7-9 on the list.” <– All of these titles are played primarily on consoles and it's a little disingenuous to compare these to SWToR that is only playable on a single system. Of course multi-platform titles are going to be more profitable simply because there are more boxes to play them on.

  3. @Daxxo yes, you’re right, but leveling is so fast in SWTOR that I always think that everyone has a level 50 char.

  4. I’m sure a lot of people quit for the same reason i did. Loved the game just tired of the combat mechanics. I did quite enjoy that SWTOR’s combat was much more fast paced which was great. It was still just the “same ol” tho.

    Another reason contributing to my not wanting to continue on is because i couldnt even play a warzone, the second i joined a game i would be runnin at 2 fps or less.
    I thought if a warzone was that bad then a raid will probably be worse!

  5. I have played the game since the release and after leveling 2 characters to 50 I am thinking of going back to WoW. My reasons are this

    1. The game is too easy, end operators are very easy to do
    2. Crafting hits a ceiling then to get better enchants its actually better to buy items and take the enchantments from that instead, its actually cheaper.
    3. Once hit a certain level of equipment there is no need to do any ‘dungeons’
    4. The support system is terrible, it seems 1 on 2 tickets that I raise are deleted before any resolution
    5. There are some really terrible bugs, a good example was an Item called a Matrix cube that takes a while to farm just disappeared from peoples equipment
    6. Living in the uk the server update time is a constant annoyance as the update happens at 9am UK time, meaning I can lose playing time.
    7. Hacks, it is quite easy to hack files in the system giving you unfair advantages in PvP
    8. In PvP itself there are classes that do way better meaning an imbalance

    However after playing WoW for some time, I can see the potiential of the game, and it has the potiential to be really good, as long as Bioware start thinking this as a community rather than a cash cow.

  6. I have to say, having played Wow since it’s EU release 12th Feb 2005 I can safely say that SWTOR was as good as WoW was on release. I maybe would even push the boat a bit further saying it was slightly better.

    Yes….. SWTOR was slightly better than WoW was 5 years ago.

    Casual gamers are not the core who have shed, if that is what Bioware think then they are in more trouble than their numbers show.

    My smallish wow 10 man guild quit WoW about half way through cataclysm, some of us had been in the guild since its inception back in 05 and when it was circa 100+ active players but this is what was left when we hit SWTOR.

    Bottom line was no addons = yuck for end game players. No way to parse combat info and even when they added a form of it in patch 1.2, what was the point, by this stage pretty much my entire gaming group had added SWTOR to the pile of corpses left by “WoW’s lair” (oh so true steal from zero punctuation) and decided that our time was better spent catching up on good TV we’d missed whilst playing WoW until Diablo 3 came out.

    If SWTOR is doing badly now, wait until next Tuesday when DIII delivers the “death blow”.

    Nice idea, about 80% of the way their which unfortunately for a “next gen” MMO is simply not enough these days..

    que c’est ra

  7. To be clear (as it wasn’t in my last post) lack of addons plus simple lack of end game (post 50 play) was the death of this game for my gaming group.

    I’m sure there are many other reasons why others have quit but our issues must be recognised in a segment of the player base.

  8. I just picked this game up on sale at best buy last week. So far I’m enjoying it for what it is, another KotoR game……I haven’t done anything MMO yet…..I feel that at this point when playing WoW I would have done several dungeon runs(even before the LFG system).

    Once I get to Level 50, or run out of free time, whatever is first, I will likely stop playing. This game should have been a single player game on the xbox just like the first 2 were. Bioware claiming that this game is KotoR 3,4,5 all in one is a straight lie.

    Oh Well. As of right now I’d give the game a 6/10. To be fair though, I would give Cataclysm a 5.5/10…….

    Sadly the pinnacle of my having fun in MMO’s is still Ragnarok Online from years ago…..

  9. Ok… Now im not going to sit here and watch you guys bash a game because it is not set up like WoW… First i would like to point out that this game is NOT WoW! Hard to believe? Your so stuck in the WoW methodalogy of doing things that you forgot that this is a new game and thus they have a new way of doing things… First off let me say that i have been playing SWTOR since Beta, and it has come a LONG way! Warzones dont lag if you have a good rig to play it on (your old WoW rig wont play this because it has REAL graphics). Opps to easy? Obviously you didnt play the opps at all…. First off let me say that it is damn near impossible for a whole guild to have the gear to even do the end game opps let alone beat it right now, since they introduced the Black hole tear type gear and the New Opps… This game does not charge for expansions and updates, the NPC’s are actually voice acted and allways go to cut scenes(nothing like going to an npc just to read boring text scripts all day). And yes this is KOTOR 3,4,and 5… If you would do a couple flashpoints or group questing you would know that… for instance you get to fight HK-47 and Revan in the Foundry! And if your upset because they are adding new features than you are just a moron… End rant!

  10. Sounds like someone is upset that people like the successful traits of wow over the clearly failing easy game that Swtor has turned into. I’ve leveled 3 chars to 50 and I’ve moved to D3. “real graphics” – wow rig – using personal jabs at people to excuse poor servers and flawed game tetra is weak. Time to realize that Blizzard is the king of pc gaming. Wow subs have maintained the same this past quarter. Swtor losing 400k subs is huge, it’s the equivalent of wow losing close to 3 million in one quarter. It’s taken a year to drop 2 million, not 3 months. Wow will begin to climb again as mop nears. Game analysis Chris linke predicts mop to exceed 13 million, and he’s in a neutral position. Swtor can join rift as games that put together a respectable push; adding pressure that will result in wows improvement. For myself, I’m done with mmos for the time being. D3, sc2, skyrim until I return to wow and the expansion that will send Swtor to sub 250k subs. I look forward to the next mmo that will ” kill wow “.

  11. Ordered SWTOR way before release date, and was looking forward to game that could compete with WoW.

    Dident take me long to find out SWTOR is not it. SWTOR brings NOTHING new to the MMO scene, and at the same time EA/BioWare are going for the award for “Most crappy Customer Support ever!”

    SWTOR could have been good, but to many mistakes was made from start tbh. Engine choice. Launch with way to many servers. lack of customer support ( Yea its so bad, ill say it twice )

    Worst part is that even now, after a drop of 400.000 subscripers, they still refuse to see there is a problem. Frank Gibeau saying it “casuals” that have left the game, and that they infact expect a increase in subscripers ? It just shows that they refuse to see the problem, and because of this, the mistakes made will never get fixed.

  12. SW:TOR is not a very good game. The PvE is kind of fun but the PvP needs lots of work. I was so excited over the release of this game but once I got to know the games content I was bored almost instantly. If BioWare would instate cross sever PvP the game may become interesting. For the meantime, I’m going back to WoW and Diablo III. Thanks for the waste of time and money BioWare.

  13. Ok… Now im not going to sit here and watch you guys bash a game because it is not set up like WoW… First i would like to point out that this game is NOT WoW! Hard to believe? Your so stuck in the WoW methodalogy of doing things that you forgot that this is a new game and thus they have a new way of doing things… First off let me say that i have been playing SWTOR since Beta, and it has come a LONG way! Warzones dont lag if you have a good rig to play it on (your old WoW rig wont play this because it has REAL graphics). Opps to easy? Obviously you didnt play the opps at all…. First off let me say that it is damn near impossible for a whole guild to have the gear to even do the end game opps let alone beat it right now, since they introduced the Black hole tear type gear and the New Opps… This game does not charge for expansions and updates, the NPC’s are actually voice acted and allways go to cut scenes(nothing like going to an npc just to read boring text scripts all day). And yes this is KOTOR 3,4,and 5… If you would do a couple flashpoints or group questing you would know that… for instance you get to fight HK-47 and Revan in the Foundry! And if your upset because they are adding new features than you are just a moron… End rant!

    I quit after the first free month that came with your original sub, and I bought the collectors edition. Its just a horrid, horrid game. If you go back and look at all the posts by a guy named “kraken” you will see all my predictions for this game. It has came to pass everything that I posted and in the order I posted them. It doesnt take some gaming industry genious to know that swtor is a very poor game with no imagination, no outstanding graphics, no end game, no outside the sandbox thinking, and no hope for the future of the game. In one of my posts I make the prediction that swtor will have worse than SWG numbers and that is comming close to being true. A game that was touted to be the best of its kind is really just like every other wow copy game in the last 5 years, a massive failure. My last post stated that this game will be free to play by this Christmas. I am afraid that it will be by Thanksgiving now after numbers are dropping so fast. Bioware should have realized that the strongest proponnent of this game would be players, not some clueless devs and producers who are more worried about keeping a job than creating a real game. At least with SWG people stayed on to the end because pre nge and cu had the most hardcore player base in history. Bioware has bombed horribly by not listening to one player during or after beta testing. There were tons of great ideas pass around but this games programming is so far imbedded in a singular play style that they would have to just rewrite the whole game to even have a chance of making it remotely entertaining.

  14. I did reduce the amout of time I play by 85% simply because I finished the game but I’m still a subscriber and probably will be for a loooong time. Its not like there are many good games that come out all the time. Actually the average quality is dropping pretty quickly. So when a nobel prize winning game like this comes out and gets bashed by some trolling haters I have to stand up and say something.
    The only reason I play less is because i’m a level 50 Jedi Guardian but I’m figuring out the new armors and stuff, got into a guild, etc. Now its part 2 I’m starting to get nice in PVP its fun. Killing worldbosses and others, travelling into empire territory to cut someone down who thinks he is safe because he’s near his outpost… I even played Ord Mantell as a commando up to level 14, was very fun.
    The world, the gameplay, the lack of lagg, the ship, lightspeed, the companions, the map, the questing process, the cinematics, the dialogues…. omg…. its beyond perfect… you never get lost, etc. I played KOTOR and beat it like 3 times, this is its rightful successor.
    Every game has its ups and downs but I think you people are waaaay to harsh with this one.
    At the same time, only angry kids post on forums, the happy ones… are just happily playing…

    It is definitly amongst the best games I have ever played in my life. You people that say the graphics suck have one of 2 issues. Either your computer sucks or you work for some shitty game like champions online. The graphics in SWTOR are amazing but you need a good GPU and CPU to profit from them, so dont try and post your worthless benchmarks on a forum when you dont have the tools to see what is shown. I have been gaming for 26 years and I’ve played a shitload of games, the graphics here are AMAZING, i have to insist. You will see when you are standing in front of the senate plaza in Coruscant for the first time, if you have full HD and 48-100 fps, you will drool on yourself.
    Furthermore the sounds are good, different ones with different width lightsabers, perfect surround sound and depths… I mean what do you people play with? An EEE PC laptop?

    Sure there are minor things that need improvement like the partying up and quality of items that vendors sell but other than that….. honestly…. playing this game was pure pleasure for 9 days and 13 hours of time. And whenever I want to feel the force, I just launch the game. Oh and now I get to play it on the Empire side and be a nasty sith sorcerer and discover… a WHOLE new game… its just epic win, for any RPG lover and MMO lover too.

    In any case, if you play it and you think it sucks, my guess is that you and your computer suck first of all and that you just dont know what games you like.

    Of course I’ll tell you that scrabble sucks, not my kind of game and I dont think its fun. Some people like hack and slash like D3, as do I sometimes, whilst others prefer pure PvP like Dota or LOL.

    Anyways… a big standing ovation from me to Bio and EA, its a pleasure to play it and you are light years ahead of the others, let the gamers catch up :)

    PS: I play D3 as well and I like it a lot but some nutjob just said that D3 offered real graphics…. wow…. I am in shock right now, i’m not saying they are bad in D3 but its worlds apart and not even the same style… some of you people have issues.

  15. @Germaximus LOOOL @ U. Seriously, go buy a new computer and stay away from forums, yur like a bad disease of forum spam.

  16. When I purchased not one but two copies of SWTOR (one for me and one for my son) because I was that excited about the game. In my mind’s eye I imagined roaming the universe ala sandbox mode while interacting with my gaming peers to learn tips, tricks, and form friendships. What we got was a poorly laid out single player game, that was both boring and bug laden. A game who’s most touted feature is voice acting? WTH?

    Combine this with (at the time) no end game, no guild/clan advanced features, and come on, who was the person who thought up the spaceship elements?! Someone needs to beat that guy with a light saber in the parking lot. So much potential ruined by a lack of imagination and piss poor game designers (honestly given those that were involved this should have been far far better at inception).

    The casuals are not the folks who left Mr. CEO, they are the ones not willing to overlook the flaws in this horrid game just because it has star wars in the title.

  17. It’s funny that they say the casuals left as if they are implying that the casuals were not what they wanted even though on many occasions BW/EA have said the casual gamer is who they want because hardcore gamers are too far and few to be a reliable revenue stream ( or something along those lines). But hey it’s all good right?

  18. @DarthWailer

    I have played the game since the release and after leveling 2 characters to 50 I am thinking of going back to WoW. My reasons are this
    1. The game is too easy, end operators are very easy to do
    2. Crafting hits a ceiling then to get better enchants its actually better to buy items and take the enchantments from that instead, its actually cheaper.
    3. Once hit a certain level of equipment there is no need to do any ‘dungeons’
    4. The support system is terrible, it seems 1 on 2 tickets that I raise are deleted before any resolution
    5. There are some really terrible bugs, a good example was an Item called a Matrix cube that takes a while to farm just disappeared from peoples equipment
    6. Living in the uk the server update time is a constant annoyance as the update happens at 9am UK time, meaning I can lose playing time.
    7. Hacks, it is quite easy to hack files in the system giving you unfair advantages in PvP
    8. In PvP itself there are classes that do way better meaning an imbalance
    However after playing WoW for some time, I can see the potiential of the game, and it has the potiential to be really good, as long as Bioware start thinking this as a community rather than a cash cow.

    I have to comment on this above post.
    1. What exactly is too easy? I found HM’s and Ops challenging in their own way. What you’re saying is just a random complaint because people can’t actually give accurate and constructive criticism.
    2. They improved crafting with past 2 patches and will continue to do so.
    3. As with WoW, once you are geared up past Heroic gear, you do it for tokens/commendations – comparable for SWTOR with daily rewards.
    4. I’ve never had issues with support, quite the opposite actually. I’ve had much faster response times to tickets. Everyone in my guild along with friends also state the same thing.
    5. They’ve fixed most of the bugs, granted there were some issues on release that should have been dealt with before release, as a whole it wasn’t that big of a deal. As for the matrix cube issue, you’re blowing that way out of proportion.
    6. Really? WoW has the same thing with maintenance day times. Actually, I get more playing time in with SWTOR than WoW on maintenance days. This issue is more of a matter what server and time zone to play on, that’s not BioWare’s fault.
    7. They’ve been working quite diligently on the hack issues and for the most part have been quite effective. Also complaining of hacks in PvP tends to be a scape goat for a lack of skill..
    8. Ya, never heard this complaint before in other MMO’s… also see above comment.

    Some people love SWTOR, some don’t. It’s a saturated market and people are becoming even more picky than they were before with games. It’s inevitable people are going to bitch, but I for one really enjoy this game and love the 2 large patches deployed just over a couple months time. No other MMO is pumping out content at the rate SWTOR is right now. Looking forward for more good things to come!

  19. Well i have been playing mmos since the launch of ultima online*pacific beta tester*. i have played DAOC, shadowbane,WOW and many others.when it comes to swtor imo leveling my warrior was so fun, but than the wall hit. Swtor was lacking bad in end game details like so many have pointed out above. th fact of the matter is, these companys , when it comes down too it only care about one thing, and you can guess what that is. the all might $$$$$$$.this is why so many hard core gamers like my self have issues with detailed things in game which if fixed would make the game great in all asspects.Mabe they need too get ahold of a few of us , fly us in, sit us down, and pick the hard core gamers brains for a while(getten paid for it would be nice too). but if you people really wanna blows us gamers away and at the same time make money. use our experience from playing games. not alot them idiots developers you got from a machine which keeps cloneing them and causing them to release crappy content. just my thoughts.

  20. @ Darth Wailer

    if you chose those reasons to leave SWTOR for WOW then you are deluding yourself. How on earth are any of those things better in WoW? Once you get the best gear in WoW what reason do you have to keep grinding? None.

    Once you get to 400 with professions where in WoW does normal crafted gear fare better than what drops in raids be it gear or schematics?

    What is easy? How many Nightmare OPs have you finished? Or are you referring to normal HM flashpoints with full Columni? Or storymode Operations? Ofc they are easy, they are meant to be easy…what “instance” in WoW is hard when full geared? If anything, both tanking and healing in SWTOR is more challenging that WoW.

    People coming up with the SWTOR – WoW bullshit need to get real.

  21. I have brought Star wars the old republic game and used the game code to fully accesses the game but anytime i try to log in to my gaming account it’s saying that i have to subscribe to my account in order to play the game even though i pay for the game and used my game code just to gain accesses to the full game which for some reason it’s keeps saying that i have to subscribe in order to play on my account which i paid a lot of money just to get the game for no think what a waste of time that’s what i say to EA

  22. the only reason i play mmo games is for the pvp,why fight a computer when i can fight a real thinking person, the pvp in swtor is so off balance its nuts, just makes the game not fun to play, the engine is no where near fast/smooth enough to keep up to the action of what is going on the battles. i do like the game, and will struggle with the pvp,thank god its going free for i would not pay for it, but my fav pvp is wow and battlefield 2142…

  23. EA is the worst customer service gaming company out there. I played UO from 97-06. I lost thousands of items, and millions of gold to their buggy game. Not 1 item was ever replaced.
    They have ” Sorry, we do not replace items” in every CM macro.

    I started to DL SWTOR then I saw EA attached to it and removed it from my computer.

  24. Well. This game is perfect, but i will stop playing. Cause my dad beats me. I am a 23 y.o. virgin, bold, with an ungly face and kids at school was doing pranks all the time at me.
    Yeah i know. I am a sad kid and the game is perfect and if there is something wrong, is just with me. But could you think for a moment:
    WHY THE FACK DID YOU CREATE A MMORPG GAME, WITH SUCH ENORMOUS GRAVITY LABEL AS “STAR WARS” TITLE BEARS, AND YOU MANAGE TO MADE IT SO FLAW?
    1) There aren’t really any other mmorpg’s games, based on popular epic sequels. As LOTR for example.
    2)There aren’t really any other mmorg’s games that F2P mode, restrains much much less it’s community. As Perfect World for example.
    3)If you want to play a game, you will pay for it, right? For example Riot Games asks League of Legends players to subscribe monthly, in order to “live the experiance” of the game. Let’s not forget that HoN (Heroes Of NewEarth) that was free to play, changed their policy and pick up the subscription method, in order to just survive the competition, since the majority of HoN players now are playing LoL.
    Yeah, SWTOR got great QUALITY, but it is one more online mmorpg with a popular label. Get real, read what times ordering you, so you can stay alive in the market of MMO’s, or simple fade out with the tag “losers”, since you got such a great title as raw material as the “Star Wards” guaranteed, yet you manage to do nothing with it, but a hit-sale for a short period of time.

  25. Hi! Your website is loading slow for me personally, that went on just like a minute or two to successfully load up,
    I really have no idea whether or not it’s entirely me or maybe websites but
    twitter loaded acceptable for me. Anyways, I am going to thank you for
    placing amazing blog post. I’m sure this has been seriously beneficial to individual who
    actually visit here. This is definitely excellent everything that you actually have done
    and wish to discover content by you. To obtain additional knowledge from posts
    that you post, I actually have book-marked this site.

Comments are closed.