The Old Republic Draws 2M Beta Volunteers

Today, Electronic Arts revealed that its upcoming MMO Star Wars: The Republic attracted more than 2 million volunteers for its recent beta test. Speaking at the annual Global Media and Communications Conference on Monday morning, EA CFO Eric Brown said, "The game itself has a huge pre-existing fan base. We had about 2.4 million people register for the Star Wars fan site, over 2 million of which volunteered to do [beta] testing for free." Over the Thanksgiving day weekend, the game saw more than 725,000 unique users, Brown explained, with each player logging an average of 12 hours over a three-day period. "In terms of peak concurrent users, we had just over a quarter of a million people playing the game simultaneously," Brown added. The Old Republic is set to debut December 20 in North America and Europe. Earlier this year, EA confirmed that it will limit the number of initial copies for the game to help prevent traffic-related problems during the game's launch. EA noted in February that The Old Republic will bring in a profit with 500,000 subscribers, and analysts expect the title to sell roughly 3 million copies within its first year of sale.