The old axiom about money is that you've got to spend it to make it. When it comes to the development of Star Wars: The Old Republic, EA must be planning to make a lot of money. A story on Eurogamer is reporting that the company has invested more money on the development of the upcoming MMO than any other game in its 30 year history. During a conference in New York earlier this week, Eric Brown, EA's CFO, claimed that SWTOR represents, "the largest ever development project, period, in the history of the company." He stated that normally, a packaged game at EA comes in with a cost of around $30 million, but that "any MMO costs significantly more than that".

Brown was asked by a securities analyst how the cost of SWTOR compares to World of Warcraft. Brown said that Blizzard spent, "$100 million, perhaps more" in 2004 to finish WoW.

"That's lifetime [research and development] to actually ship it and obviously then there's maintenance subsequent to ship and expansion packs."

There's no doubt that $100 million (or more) is a lot to spend on a game, but as stated earlier, seemingly the way to make it is to spend it. To that end, it's already been fairly well established that WoW is now generating approximately $100 million a month for Blizzard, so in that case, the investment has been well worth it. EA is clearly banking on a huge adoption base for The Old Republic. As of right now, the planned release date is spring of 2011, so it's going to be a while before EA knows if this has been money well spent.