SWTOR Is Close To $1 Billion In Revenue, But How Does That Stack Up?

Star Wars: The Old Republic is approaching the $1 billion mark in total revenue. That's according to Electronic Arts COO & CFO Blake Jorgensen who said on an earnings call this week that "we are close to $1 billion on Star Wars: The Old Republic revenue from the start of its history."

One billion dollars seems like a lot of money -- and it is -- but spread over nearly eight years, it's a little less impressive. In the same call, Jorgensen lauded the Sims franchise for passing the $5 billion total revenue mark. For a product that's been around about twice as long (19 years), that's a much better per-year value.

If you want to compare SWTOR directly with other MMORPGs, we can do that too, to some degree. Going back through NCSoft's financials, and using the current exchange rate between the South Korean won and US dollar, we can see that Guild Wars 2 has brought in $641 million in its seven years of service. That's about 2/3 the revenue for a game that is a year younger, cost less to make, and doesn't have a licensing fee; remember, some portion of SWTOR's revenue goes to Disney for its use of the Star Wars license. ArenaNet, or more properly NCSoft, doesn't pay any outside party for Guild Wars 2.

NCSoft's other properties are also impressive, comparatively. Since the start of 2012 (SWTOR launched in December 2011), Lineage 2 has brought in $424 million, Aion $526 million, Blade & Soul $717 million, and the big moneymaker, Lineage, has made over $1.5 billion in revenue. The $1 billion milestone for Star Wars: The Old Republic is nice, but it's not that far above and beyond successful MMOs from other companies. And we won't even talk about what World of Warcraft makes.