Game publisher Electronic Arts started pre-orders for the highly anticipated MMO Star Wars The Old Republic just a week ago. However the company announced on Tuesday that the pre-order numbers for the BioWare-developed game have already broken its previous records. Gamasutra reports that according to EA exec Frank Gibeau, "It"s the largest number we"ve done at EA comparison to other titles; the next closest title was Battlefield 3, and it was up significantly from there." EA declined to give specific numbers for the game"s pre-orders. However the company did indicate the numbers are ahead of EA"s own internal goals.
If EA is to be believed that means that there could be a ton of PC gamers who will be signing onto Star Wars The Old Republic when it finally launches. However Gibeau says that EA is prepared for the flood of gamers, saying, "We"ve got a really aggressive plan to be able to scale multiple millions of users." He added, "We"ll be able to scale up and light up new severs on a fairly quick basis. We"ve got a plan to do that over the months following ship, and we"ve got a lot of capacity built into that." So far EA has yet to give a specific release date for the game, saying only that it plans to launch the MMO title sometime during the holiday 2011 time period. On Tuesday Gibeau said that EA might finally announce a final release date for Star Wars The Old Republic in September.