Open after next quarter’s financial report:
Q: You’ve previously said you need about a half million subscribers to be profitable, is that still the case?
A: At 500,000 subscribers, we’d break even. At a million, we’d be making a profit but nothing worth writing home about. As it scales up from there, we’re talking about a nice profit. At this point with the successful launch, we can take the worst case scenarios off the table.
Frank Gibeau: Our third global blockbuster in the quarter was Star Wars: The Old Republic. You’ve heard all the superlatives, the only thing I can add is BioWare/Austin has delivered a game that millions of people are going to be playing for a very long time.
Hardcore Casual 
I don’t think we will actually get this kind of detail again. I think it is only a response to the dip in EA’s stock price.
It will be interesting to see how they dodge the “what happened to 1.6m of your subs” question.
Not as confident as you that the game will fail that quickly. People have an amazing ability to turn themselves into barely functional animatronic pigeons and do nothing but push levers that are guaranteed to push (whether or not the lever delivers feed is, of course, random because that’s what keeps pigeons pushing levers).
Comments on Massively suggest to me that there are fans who would keep playing the game even if they hated it, just because they adamantly look at any critique of any part of the game as an attack on it and a sign that all the writers at Massively are part of some anti-SWTOR conspiracy.
“My Tor guild is on endgame and there isn’t much to do. We decided to roll on Project 1999 and rock eq. Let me tell you how in two days we are spending more time playing this epic game than the latest and greatest. So many memories.”
http://www.project1999.org/forums/showthread.php?t=63226
Well, I am glad we got that cleared up. Those sorts of statements never come back to haunt anybody, ever.
Correct me if I am wrong, but “millions” means 2 million or more. 1.6 million is not that.
You’re not wrong, but you could look at him as claiming the game is certain to grow. Or you could look at it as admitting they will have a lot of turnover.
I’ve played 15-20 hours a week (which is very heavy for me), and I should hit 50 with my first character this month. If the other stories are as entertaining, I can see subbing for 6 months or so before I run out of content. (or until GW2 or Planetside 2 hit the scene, and I jump to the next shiny!)
6 months does not equal very long time in my book. That is unless you count wow tourists (TM) staying for 30 days as the norm.
Like saucelah, I can see this game being around for a while. Those that like it seem to be very enthuasiastic, in spite of the all the flaws. Maybe it can carve it own niche out of the themepark market, in the way LOTRO has done.
Diablo3, MoP and GW2 launches this year will be big tests.
It be fun debating whether the game is a success every time numbers are released. I have no doubt that EA will continue to refer to it as a runaway success regardless of its profitability.
Its got 100hrs of single player gaming. thats a hell of a deal for 40$ (amazon deal). Now if they can succeed in making it a multiplayer game soon, who knows how long it will be around.
Between Skyrim and Dark Souls, a friend of mine has been occupied for months and months. Even if it failed as a traditional MMORPG, SWTOR may find a lot of success as a solo RPG with some online/multiplayer elements.
My guess is that the success won’t last much more than a year though, which is the average shelf life for solo RPGs these days.