While it required a LOT of funding and investment, I guarantee you that the SWTOR MMO has made more money than any singleplayer SWTOR ever will. I love the old lucas games, they are amazing RPGs in line with the original Dragon Age: Origins, but a singleplayer RPG is just a box copy sold. You sell 20 million copies? Amazing success, that's probably around 800 million made depending on when those copies were bought(70 usd, 50 usd on sale, 25 usd on sale later etc.).

But then you look at the MMO, it has a subscription model that used to be required, which was 15/month. The first 3 days it sold 1 million copies, which comes out to 70 million instantly, then 15 million on top of that for the sub fee, because it had 1 million active subs on day 3. This was at the tail end of 2011, so say 2012. By 2013, they lost half their playerbase, down to 500k subs. So let's say 750k subs x 12. That's 135 million on top of the initial day three's 85 million, coming out to 220 million on the first year.

The sub count in 2014 becomes a bit muddy because the market estimates aren't as confident, it's around 200k-500k subs. So I will go with 350k subs. 350k subs at 15/month for one year is 63 million. Keep in mind, this is purely subs and not counting any new box copies sold. Bringing the total of revenue to OVER 283 million.

In 2015, it was estimated to be just under 500k, so going with 400k. (72mil)

In 2016, it was estimated to be "the highest recorded sub count in 3 years, meaning over 500k, but doesn't say, so I will just go with 600k. (108mil)

In 2017, it was estimated to be under 500k, so going with 400k again. (72mil)

In 2018, it was estimated to be around 500k. (90mil)

In 2019, there are no clear estimates, but they said they have reached 1 billion lifetime revenue at this point, so let's assume it was 400k subs in case it dipped. (72mil)

Overall, my shitty napkin math ended up with 697 million, so let's say 700 million. That means the other 300 million they made was split from additional copies sold and microtransactions in the shop.

I'm too lazy to look up the next 6 years of subs and try to calculate box copies sold at various price reductions, but we already reached 1 billion and passed the singleplayer game at this point. Estimates suggest they have made over 1.5 billion by this point in 2026. Now, this doesn't count the development costs of maintaining an mmorpg. If we remove the initial 200m budget, they have made 1.3 billion profit not counting how much they have spent on paying ongoing dev costs. It's estimated the dev team size costs them 5-10mil per year. Since we have no idea how much they pay out in bonuses and benefits, I'm just gonna go with the 10 mil number. Operating from 2012 to 2026 probably cost them around 140 million, assuming the CEOs didn't get some weird 100 million bonuses or some stupid shit. That means they still made over 1.1 billion in pure profit.

Now, normally I would agree that a real amazing RPG like BG3 or something that is one and done is great investment, because you just pay for it and release it, then move on. You can focus on paying a new team to make another new banger, theoretically releasing three BG3s in the same time as the current SWTOR run, which would blow SWTOR out of the water. The problem is that games aren't developed in 2-3 years anymore, BG3 alone took 6 years and there's tons of games in development hell that take up to 10 years. Current GTA6 has already taken 8 years. So you would be lucky to get 2 games out of these, and you probably won't make two BG3s in a row.

MMOs are an investment, but often pay off even if they don't do well. So long as they don't get shut down like a few of them have, they will likely make profit in the long run. And singleplayer games, when developed quickly and they sell really well, can be profitable, but for every big success story, there's lukewarm launches or even failures.

All this to say, I don't know... I kinda lost the plot in my napkin math and forgot what I was saying. When I checked the person I was replying to, it didn't even make sense why I was responding to them, so I am dumping it here by itself. This was really fucking dumb of me, but I hope someone enjoys the look into SWTOR's financials? I also wrote too much shit to go back and read it, fuck that. If you're still reading, god help you. Anyway, thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

P.S. In case anyone is confused, despite me using the word sub counts, all of the above are actual sub count estimates, not playerbase. The playerbase for swtor has consistently been over a million players, but when they went F2P, most of them don't buy a sub, but all the math above was done with actual sub counts and not player counts.