Ultima Online is Widely Profitable, According to EA Games Head

Ultima Online is, and I quote, “widely profitable”. That coming from Frank Gibeau, who is President of the EA Games Label.

Over on GamesIndustry.biz, which obviously covers the gaming industry, there is an interview with Gibeau focusing on several of EA’s existing and upcoming projects.

In regards to a question concerning the reported $300 million budget for Star Wars: The Old Republic,

You look at a game that has 200 hours of gameplay for each of the six classes, and that doesn’t include the crafting, the raids, the multiplayer. It’s vast. It’s a gigantic game. And that costs money. But when you get one of these launched they persist for a long period of time. Ultima is on its first decade and it still has tens of thousands of subscribers and is widely profitable for us. It’s just the nature of the beast that you have to build this amount of content. Do I wish it wasn’t this expensive? Absolutely, but I think everybody does. At the same time it doesn’t really do us much good to comment on how much it costs. Ultimately what matters is whether it’s a good service and do people really like the game?

I don’t really have much to say, but just found it interesting and vaguely reassuring that UO is still profitable and that some within the EA leadership are aware of its existence.

Registration on GamesIndustry.biz is required to read the full interview, and it’s well worth a read if you are interested in seeing the direction that EA is going.