So, there’s been some hubbub around Electronic Arts over the last few days, as the company ramps up for the release of its third quarter earnings on February 1st. Yesterday, EA’s stock closed at $17.54 per share, which, in context, meant that the gaming goliath’s stock was down 30 percent since hitting its 52-week high in early November. This drop was mostly due to the collective shock relating to the news concerning its recently released title, Star Wars: The Old Republic, which now has a ridiculous price tag attached to it — as Wall Street is estimating the cost to be between $150 and $200 million.

EA’s studio responsible for creating the much-touted online game, BioWare, spent some six-odd years developing Star Wars, and obviously there are concerns over whether or not the game will be able to satisfy the geeky desires and high expectations of both Star Wars fans and the avid World of Warcraft-playing, MMO gaming fans — especially as they’ll need to sell millions. Not always an easy audience to satisfy, but an eager and quick-to-spend audience if the game meets expectations — as the LA Times points out. (Though Trion has been having some serious success in this arena — see our post from yesterday.)

Some are saying that it could be the most expensive online game in history, and at $60 a pop, obviously there are those concerned that the deficit will be too great. However, analysts at Macquerie Equities Research today said that they believe initial sales of Star Wars will still be relatively good, and are still on track to hit their target of 1.5 million. It also helps that the costs were already absorbed into EAs financials.

Macquerie said that how the stock will perform will be largely affected by Star Wars’ sales, but if sales get close to their projection of 1.5 million, the firm expects the stock to make a bounce-back. While some are saying that, because EA hasn’t announced sales numbers yet, the likelihood is that sales have been not-so-good. Instead, EA has only said that it’s in a “quiet period” and will not be commenting as a result. Fair enough.

Others have said that the analysis of the game’s server loads show that there isn’t as much activity, but Macquerie would like to remind those people that it’s not easy to make accurate estimates of the numbers of users based on server loads — especially without knowledge of how they’re allocating server loads.

Glitches and mechanical problems have also been mentioned as influencing poor sales and low excitement, but, again, Macquerie defends EA, saying that, while this could affect the long-term outlook for the game, these kinds of problems are expected at initial release, and may not have as big of an affect as some might believe.

Thus, Macquerie isn’t having any of this nay-saying, and is expecting EA’s stock to outperform — and be on the rise. The game will need about 500,000 subscribers to get close to even, and, of course, the other side is that, they could be way ahead of the ball, and if they were to get several million, well than what one analyst called “the single largest bet” of the EA CEO’s career might just turn out to be an enormous, money-raining win.

What do you think?

You can’t always count on the wisdom of crowds. But this particular project turned out not merely good, but amazing. Star Wars Uncut is a project by filmmaker Casey Pugh (and edited by Aaron Valdez and Michael Pugh), in which Star Wars: A New Hope was divided into 15-second segments, each of which was replicated by fans in whatever way they chose. Connect the new segments and voila! Crowdsourced magic.

You can watch the whole thing, with each component hand-picked for your viewing pleasure, here:

It’s stuff like this that reassures me that the Internet is, in the end, a collaborative and positive force. Not that all it is for is silly videos, but think about the fact that just a few years ago, this project would literally be impossible for a number of reasons. Not only now has the ability to produce and share video become mainstream, a trivial task even, but also the ability to collaborate globally, with no regard for distance, language, or other factors.

To see something as light and fun as this produced using these powerful tools of ours is not, as some might expect, depressing, as if we are incapable of anything better. I think it is representative of the versatility of those tools and the willingness of people to use them. That’s a heartening though. Today, a Star Wars reshoot. Tomorrow, an independent film by dissenters in Iran. It’s really not such a great leap between these two things.

At any rate, enjoy the film. It’s ridiculous all the way through, and apparently Adam Savage is in there somewhere. It’s also available on Vimeo if you prefer that.

In case you missed the news, Star Wars launched on Blu-ray this week. Lucas & Co. never miss an opportunity to soil their brand and so, along with turning to annoying in-game advertising, recently wrapped the handrails of several Tokyo subway cars. So, you know, passengers can have imaginary lightsaber battles with stationary props. AWESOME! Japan gets all the fun stuff.

My only wish is that they put these wraps on more items. Escalator handrails, for one, would be awesome. But the ultimate advertising venue is no doubt stripper polls. Think about. Not that I frequent such establishments (Totally serious. Never been) but their patrons are generally Star Wars’ die hards. This is the crowd that is most likely to purchase the new Blu-ray release anyway and would probably be rather amused by watching the ladies slide up and down a beam plasma. I would.

Images via Official Star Wars Blog

Andrew Ainsworth, the creator of the original Storm Trooper gear in Star Wars, won an infringement case against Lucasfilm allowing him to make and sell his $3,000 helmets without suffering the sting of litigation. Ainsworth made the original armor in 1976 and now sells it on his site, SDSProps.com.

The case has been brewing since 2009 when Lucasfilm sued in the US and then in the UK. An anomaly in the law, writes the BBC, allowed Ainsworth to classify these as functional rather than artistic items, “under which the creative and highly artistic works made for use in films… may not be entitled to copyright protection in the UK”

This means the company will add new and improved items to its already impressive line of storm-trooper gear, allowing Star Wars fans to, in the immortal words of Han Solo, “take us up to warp speed, Mr. Sulu” when it comes to A New Hope memorabilia.

And I am C-3PO, human-cyborg relations. And this is my counterpart R2D2. We’ve clearly been pimped out by Master George again. It was probably R2′s fault. That malfunctioning little twirp. I told him not to sell out and let us be turned into cheap gaming accessories, but he’s faulty, malfunctioning. Kept babbling on about his mission. We seem to be made to suffer. It’s our lot in life.

LucasArts and Xbox just unveiled the Kinect Star Wars Limited Edition Xbox 360, complete with a gold controller, white Kinect senor and R2-D2-themed Xbox. The bundle of course comes with Kinect Star Wars, but also Kinect Adventures — as if playing a Jedi will ever get old. The Star Wars theme is more than just a fancy paint job. The console will make R2′s signature beep when turned on or the optical drive tray is used.

The 320GB special edition will be available “later this year” for $449.

It’s been a while since we’ve posted any interesting Kinect hacks. They were coming fast and furious for a while, but this is the first I’ve seen in a while that really makes me happy. Robotics students at Stanford put this “JediBot” together from an articulating arm and a Kinect (and of course a little robotics know-how). The Kinect tracks the location of both “lightsabers” and has the robot make an attack or defending move based on their positions.

Right now it doesn’t go too fast, but considering what these robot arms are capable of, I’m not sure I’d want it going at full speed.

Check out Stanford’s news item on the project here, then move on to the Robocalypse tag to see why teaching robots to sword-fight is not the best idea.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I’ll be giving Lucasfilm any of my money for a while. Think about it, Lucasfilm. Everything you have is because of people like these guys, who were just trying to put together a love-fest for your golden-egg-laying goose. This kind of thing doesn’t go over well.

[via TechDirt]

Mod of the year? Is there such of a thing? If so, this one wins by the trailer alone. Star Wars Mod: Galactic Warfare turns Call of Duty: Modern Warfare into a legitimate Star Wars FPS. Download it here and say goodbye to summer.

Second Sega Toys Homestar Planetarium news item in a row: following the version that’s good for travel from yesterday, maker Sega Toys took the wraps off a Star Wars model at the Tokyo Toy Show. It’s a fully functional planetarium, just in the shape of R2-D2, and it shows the location of the Death Star.

R2-D2 projects about 10,000 stars onto the ceiling in your living room and stands about 21cm high.

Here’s the Death Star:

This must buy for Star Wars and astronomy geeks (we know you’re out there) will cost $85 when it hits stores in Japan in September. Ask specialized online shopping services like the Japan Trend Shop, Rinkya, Flutterscape or Geek Stuff 4 U if you want to import one from Japan.

Via Hobby Media [IT] (thanks, Francesco Fondi) and IT Media [JP]

If you’re a fan of Spock, Orko, Sulu, and all the rest of those great Star Wars characters, you may want to get out a few thousand dollars when the acetate crawls from the original movies come back on the market because they’re clearly going cheap. For example, at a relatively unpublicized auction someone picked up the original Empire Strikes Back crawl for a mere $40,000, which, knowing the depravity of the average sci-fi fan, is wildly low.

The crawl was sold at at Saban Theatre in Beverly Hills. It appears that the original car from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang sold for $2.6 million at the same auction, a number that suggests a profound disrespect for the canon of science fiction in America and an equally odd fetish for Dick Van Dyke.

via TheRichTimes

If you’re a robot otaku who happens to be a Star Wars otaku, too, then this video is for you. Japanese robot maker Yaskawa recently showcased its Motoman 7-axis robo arms at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Shanghai (which ends this Friday).

And what’s better than demonstrating the speed and flexibility of industrial robots by letting two of them publicly battle it out with lightsabers? Nothing, as you can see in the video embedded below:

As you might remember, the Motoman can make pancakes, too.

Via Akihabara News via IEEE Spectrum

May the 5th be with you! Yeah, I’m a day late on this one but it’s still worth your time. In fact, it’s totally more watchable than the real prequels.

Thanks to ThinkGeek for the post excellent prize.

UPDATE – Congrats to Mechwd for winning our contest.

“Join the Empire” with Mimobot – Recruitment video from MIMOBOT & mimoZine on Vimeo.

This would never happen if you had these awesome Star Wars Moleskines. But be careful where you keep it. Someone might mistake it for a book of Star Wars trivia, and… oh god! All your slash fiction revealed!

No pricing or availability, which means I couldn’t use my “coming to a galaxy near you” line. Noooo!

[via Nerd Approved and Blastr]

The Blu-ray edition of Star Wars: The Complete Saga now has a release date: September 16 of this year. Amazon lists the collection for $90, so start saving your pennies.

The 16th falls on a Friday, so Blu-ray.com surmises that this gives retailers the chance to host all sorts of Star Wars-related launch events. Those should be… interesting.

The question on everyone’s mind, of course, is: will I actually sit down and watch the original trilogy for the first time now? (I’ve only seen Episode 1 and 3.)

Take offensive action! It’s a trap! Oh never mind. The right people aren’t listening. Star Wars is going 3D and short of a glorious asteroid crashing into Earth, there’s not a damn thing we can do about it. The plan is to release one film a year in 3D starting with Episode One on February 10, 2012. This chronological order will retell the story in proper timeline order while at the same time giving Lucas a potential escape pod just in case the 3D fad dies before it’s time to release A New Hope in the gimmick that is 3D. Please let the Mayans be right.

Conceptually, this AT-AT made of old computer parts is amazing. It’s well-detailed, includes real battle scarring, and it looks like it could stand in for one of the AT-ATs in the second Star Wars movie, The Wrath of Kahn. Practically, however, I worry that this $450 model – available now on Etsy in a limited edition of 1 – is really a make or break situation for a collector. Do you buy this and accept that you will no longer see a member of the opposite sex in the nude? Or do you let it go, secure in the knowledge that one day your offspring will drive their own AT-ATs through the snow fields of Klingon, at least on the holodeck.

I also wonder why the Empire decided to make AT-ATs. Why four legs? Why not a big tank? Wouldn’t a conveyance that was flatter to the ground offer more stability? And why is Luke’s blood green? So many questions, so few obsessives to call me out in furious anger in comments correcting my every, trolling mistake.

via Technabob