EA downplays Old Republic shortage fears

Gamers shouldn’t be too worried about struggling to get their hands on a copy of Star Wars: The Old Republic at launch, EA has said.

Despite saying it will ration” sales of Star Wars: The Old Republic upon its release to ensure it can maintain a working online service, the publisher still says its plans for the game’s release on December 20th are hugely ambitious.

We’ve taken a very detailed approach to looking at how do we maximize the customer experience when they go online with Star Wars – how to maximize the fun that they’re having online, the stability, the quality?” EA Labels boss Frank Gibeau told investors.

We’re using our beta test to inform us of what scale that we can handle. Our pre-order campaign is tailored towards how we’re going to do that.

We’re looking at a rollout plan that is fairly ambitious. We don’t feel like we’re going to be leading too much demand behind at launch but we definitely are going to be very cautious and thoughtful about how many people we bring on and in what order.

It’s a very interesting proposition from that standpoint because you have the Star Wars brand that draws in a lot of people. That is a good thing because we think we can sustain the business over a very long time as we grow. There’s going to continually be new customer segments that we can open up and bring into the service.”