Why Star Wars: The Old Republics release date works

Last week BioWare finally announced the release date of Star Wars: The Old Republic, after roughly a year refining its technique of shrugging every time a journalist asked them about the launch window. Most have been baffled by the studio's plan – TOR has been pushed as far to the end of the year as possible without missing out on the coveted target audience of Christmas enthusiasts. The game is going to be released either December 20 or December 22, depending on what part of the world you live.

While most AAA games creep onto shelves just before the holiday season, both tradition and marketing philosophy dictates new major releases will taper off sometime around American Thanksgiving. BioWare, on the other hand, has planned to exert its grip on the MMORPG genre by putting a game in stores about a month after The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Modern Warfare 3, Uncharted 3, Need for Speed: The Run, and Assassin's Creed: Revelations. It'll share the same barren territory of pre-Christmas December with Super Pokemon Rumble on the 3DS.

A delay wasn't out of the question. The amount of money rumoured to be invested in the project – a number that makes World of Warcraft's $80 million sound like a quaint, mid-level development gig – still didn't stop EA from teasing the idea that its MMO might not release until next year. The firm's CFO pointed to the end of the year as the likeliest launch window, but included the footnote that fiscal guidance may cause it to delay until 2012.

BioWare's "it's ready when it's ready" policy for the game painted another layer of vagueness onto the potential launch date, but it's safe to say EA's actions were always going to be dictated by three issues:

If It's Christmas, We Sell It:

EA's approach to making a blockbuster MMO is unsustainable without both an immediate and huge influx of subscribers at launch. The firm already admitted that in order to just break even, Star Wars: The Old Republic needs one million subscribers – each paying roughly £9 a month. Pre-orders might promise a high likelihood that it will meet its requirements, but to miss the Christmas rush would put TOR down at least another month without reaping the benefits of its subscription model.

Proof is in the pudding, and the pudding is an orc:

Neither EA nor BioWare are oblivious to the stuff that fuelled successful MMOs in the past. EA has already said it's carefully studied World of Warcraft's initial launch and its continued development over the year that followed, and the publisher has plans to emulate its rival's 18-month update cycle.

This being the case, it's worth thinking back to last year's release of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, WoW's third expansion, as a point of comparison. Cataclysm had a similarly late-in-the-year release of December 7 and still shattered all PC game sales records. If EA is dedicating time to following Blizzard's procedural manual for launching an MMO, it is likely that Cataclysm has made a December release look plausible, if not like a good idea overall.

Those jerks from Blizzard:

Equally likely is a dark fear on EA's part - a deep and innate and unguarded fear of Blizzard's shadow. Blizzard has been promising a major update for World of Warcraft for months. Its userbase has gotten restless with Cataclysm, and Patch 4.3 is a tentative cure before the next expansion, which is thought to be due sometime in the second quarter of next year.

Blizzard has kept mum about a release date for the patch, but it's safe to use "sooner rather than later" as a rule of thumb here, and it will almost certainly be weighing on the minds of TOR's marketing team.

In the past, major releases out of WoW have had a dramatic effect on rival MMOs: its second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, was released a month and a half after Mythic's Warhammer Online – almost exactly when Warhammer Online began losing subscribers. It's likely, if not completely probable, that WoW's next major content patch would provide the incentive necessary to get Star Wars out the door as fast as possible before former WoW players re-subscribe.

At its worst, this launch date is a deeply calculated plan to increase The Old Republic's chance to get on top and stay on top. But TOR will sell regardless of an awkward release date. Even through all the Reddit forums fuelled with healthy scepticism, the combination of a Lucas-branded universe and a fanbase with a single collective urge to experience MMO lightsaber combat is enough to make this the case. December 20 or November 20, Star Wars is always Star Wars.