EA CFO Scales Back Old Republic Expectations, Thinks Gamer Blogs Are Funny

EA CFO Eric Brown, in a conference call to investors, said EA CFO Eric Brown didn’t know what he was talking about when he said Old Republic was EA’s largest project ever.

“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 Eric 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

This, of course, contradicts reports from respected analysts and somewhat less respected bloggers that Old Republic would require 1m subscribers for a profit and 2m to be truly successful. Brown’s response: don’t believe a word those crazy Interweb people say!

“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.”

We at Broken Toys take a simple joy in the fact that we can bring substance-free humor to the desktops of EA executives everywhere.