EA has stated that they’re spending more on Star Wars: The Old Republic than any game in their history.

Speaking at the Janney Capital Markets’ 2010 Consumer Conference, EA CFO Eric Brown explained that this is one of the reasons SWTOR has had its release window pushed back beyond March 2011.

“It 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,” he said (via Gamasutra).

“We’re not expecting it to ship in fiscal 2010, nor have we given a specific ship date thereafter. We’re intentionally being nonspecific on the ship date.

“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.

“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.

“We think it has very broad appeal,” said Brown, pointing out that most of the attendees were no doubt familiar with the movies.

Brown also declared the capital well-invested, calling developers BioWare, “is one of the highest-rated studios in terms of quality overall.”