Star Wars: The Old Republic is confirmed as a free-to-play title, and this is a significant shift away from the game’s developed business plan based on subscriptions only. The shift is such for the game that Matt Bromberg, general manager of BioWare Austin, isn’t sure it will result in greater profits.

” don’t know,” he replied. “My primary intention is to make as many people play this beautiful game that we’ve made. It just so happens that the business will naturally grow as more people come to play the game, but we’re not trying to squeeze every single penny out of it.”

“There are lots of Star Wars fans out there, but really I don’t know what to expect. A lot of other games that have moved from subscription to hybrid haven’t lost as many customers as you might think, in fact a lot of them have gained subscribers,” added Bromberg. “You have to plan for this but you can never be sure. We do think the numbers will grow steadily but we’re not looking for some enormous surge on day one.”

Source: CVG {link no longer active}