Star Wars success ‘reflects healthy MMO market’

The success of Star Wars: The Old Republic since its release last month reflects on a healthy MMO space, a market analyst has claimed.

The Bioware title currently has more than one million registered users, with early adopters getting a 30 day subscription-free period.

"We view the early success of Star Wars as an indication of a healthy MMO market," said Baird Equity Research’s Colin Sebastian, as reported by gamesindustry.biz.

"While there is likely some shifting of usage from Activision’s World of Warcraft, we see a viable market for multiple million-user MMOs in the US and Europe."

The company estimates that the game has 350,000 concurrent users at peak.

It remains to be seen however whether the current users will keep their subscriptions after the free period expires.

MMO rival Blizzard’s World of WarCraft has seen subscription’s for the fantasy game fall by nearly two million over the last year, with Gamebrief’s Nicholas Lovell recently stating The Old Republic “will be the last big MMO”, as payment models move to free-to-play.

SWTOR, which was officially released on December 20th following early access to subscribers, has a current rating of 87 on Metacritic, although many reviews for the game are still in progress.