Star Wars MMO won't harm Warhammer Online

EA Games president Frank Gibeau has admitted that the newly-announced Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO will "overlap to a degree" in terms of customer base with Warhammer Online, but he doesn't believe it will be a problem - and that the genre is big enough for them both.

Talking at a recent event in San Francisco when the Star Wars MMO was revealed, Gibeau responded to a question as to whether it was a competitor for Warhammer Online.

"Well, as much as Need for Speed is a competitor for FIFA," he told GamesIndustry.biz. "They compete in the same genre of videogames but they're very diverse customer bases.

"The Warhammer customer base will overlap to a degree with Star Wars, but obviously you're bringing in millions of new customers with the Star Wars universe."

And talking about whether people had the time and money to invest in multiple MMOs, Gibeau was positive. "I think that in Asia you see more participation across more games, in the West traditionally it has been fairly monogamous in terms of you would basically look up one MMO and stay with it," he said.

"What we're finding now is people are jumping in and out and having multiple accounts, so I'm fairly confident that when we are in a position having SW and WH in the marketplace, the market category's going to be very big at that point and there will be plenty of room for both to be successful, as well as for competitors like WoW and City of Heroes.

"I play WoW a lot, I really like it," he added.

The full interview with Frank Gibeau is available now.