In a conference call (via Gamasutra), Electronic Arts CFO Eric Brown admitted that SW:TOR is the most expensive video game the publisher has ever invested in

According to a recent article by Gamasutra, Electronic Arts has spent more cash on its upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO than any other video game in its history. Gamasutra was reporting comments made by EA CFO Eric Brown at Janney Capital Markets' 2010 Consumer Conference, which the site listened to earlier this week. According to Gamasutra, Brown said that SW:TOR—developed by BioWare—is "the largest R&D project EA has ever undertaken in terms of total dollars that we expect to spend bringing the title to market."

Brown also confirmed that we probably won't see a 2010 release date for the MMO, considering the time that's required to polish an investment of that magnitude. "We're not expecting it to ship in fiscal 2010, nor have we given a specific ship date thereafter," said Brown, according to Gamasutra. "We're intentionally being nonspecific on the ship date." It's clear that EA is planning ahead for every contingency possible so that SW:TOR doesn't follow the same fate Warhammer Online, which was barely hanging onto its "AAA" status by a thread into 2010. Check out a few more comments from Brown after the jump.

"[...] In the past, for MMOs, the type of fiction that has resonated most broadly is fiction based on swords and knights and sorcery, et cetera," Brown explained. "Star Wars is analogous to that -- instead of the swords, you have the lightsabers; instead of the knights you have the Jedi -- we think it's a fiction that does very well, we think it's a fiction that spans the decades," Brown added, pointing out that most if not all of the conference's attendees were likely to be familiar with the property. "We think it has very broad appeal," he said.

And EA believes the project couldn't be in any better hands: "BioWare is one of the highest-rated studios in terms of quality overall," Brown says, adding that Mass Effect 2, with a Metacritic score of 96 and among the third-highest overall on the aggregator, "is the highest-quality title EA ever released."

With a strong property, an enormous investment and the right studio, EA thinks it's found the project that should take top billing in its MMO strategy -- "our principal investment and commitment vis a vis the MMO space," says Brown.

As for Warhammer, it has "a couple hundred thousand subscribers to date," according to Brown. "But the Star Wars MMO does indeed represent our primary emphasis vis a vis this category."

[via Gamasutra]