So does that make them step-brothers?

EA Games President, Frank Gibeau had a chat with GamesIndustry.biz and discussed the current state of the MMO market and how the recently announced Star Wars: The Old Republic will play with the other big hitter MMO in the EA stable, Warhammer Online. Each of the games are made by MMO developers purchased by EA so in some respects they have to play nicely, but both houses are going to be looking out for their best interests I'm certain. Following up on SOE's John Smedley comment, Star Wars Galaxies Wants to Co-Exist with SW:TOR Frank appears to view the EA games more like co-opetition instead of competitors:

”Well, as much as Need for Speed is a competitor for FIFA. They compete in the same genre of videogames but they're very diverse customer bases. The Warhammer customer base will overlap to a degree with Star Wars, but obviously you're bringing in millions of new customers with the Star Wars universe.”

Another morsel from this interview is Frank's observance of WAR numbers going up, despite Blizzard stating that the World of Warcraft players are already coming back from WAR:

”No, actually our player numbers are increasing, so I don't know where they're getting that data. Our numbers are doing great. It's booming, both in Europe and North America.“

And lastly that the players from the west are straying from the long-held tradition of being mono-gamers, unlike those from Asia:

”I think that in Asia you see more participation across more games, in the West traditionally it has been fairly monogamous in terms of you would basically look up one MMO and stay with it. What we're finding now is people are jumping in and out and having multiple accounts...“

It reminds me of Nascar when an owner has multiple cars in the race. While the owner can't have them both win, he/she sure as heck doesn't want them to pile into each other and take both of the cars out of the race. For the rest of the interview, stop by GamesIndustry.biz.


To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our Warhammer 40,000: Storm of Vengeance Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning Game Page.

Last Updated: Mar 29, 2016

Comments