While EA says it is incurring "significant development costs" for its Star Wars-themed MMO The Old Republic, the company says those costs could turn in to significant profits with relatively moderate subscriber numbers.

"At half a million subscribers, the game is substantially profitable, but it's not the kind of thing we would write home about," EA CFO Scott Brown said in a Gamasutra-attended conference call accompanying EA's third quarter fiscal earnings report today. "Anything north of a million subscribers, it's a very profitable business."

Brown stressed to investors that the costs being incurred now would "essentially turn on a dime" to profits the day the title ships, a date still targeted for sometime after March but before the end of calendar 2012.

Brown also criticized some news outlets for irresponsible reporting on the game's development costs.

"There's been a fair amount of talk on various blogs describing [Old Republic development] spends that are vastly higher than anything we've ever put in place," he said. 

"Don't read gamer blogs as having any substance. They bring a chuckle, but they also bring a frustration for those that are being responsible with the management of EA's R&D dollars."

In May, Brown said the game was "the largest R&D project EA has ever undertaken in terms of total dollars that we expect to spend bringing the title to market."

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/32784

Hmm I wonder how much it has actually cost...

could happen, WOW has 14 million so there is room to share 

Don't think its impossible. Bioware are a great developer and the voice acting and muliplayer interactive dialogue system could get some single player RPG'ers interested, the star wars franchise is huge and well known, its based in the kotor universe (which is loved by many people0 and most importantly they haven't rushed the game. If they can release it with some polish it could avoid many of the pitfalls that most mmos seem to fall into (see the latest SE mmo to know what I'm talking about).

But it could flop aswell, so we'll have to wait and see.

This is one MMO that could really bring in the money and have loads of subscribers. Bioware, Star Wars, KoToR timeline, it all looks set to be a hit.

Slightly off topic but didn't EA say they made more money in LOTR Online when it went to a free to play model?

They did say that they made more money but I think you have to remember the game didn't do to well when it was pay to play and time will tell if that revenue can be sustained.

They really need this to succeed then.