...whether or not you actually want to buy it from EA's new Steam rival or not. At retail, players will have a choice of stores to choose from, but online, The Old Republic will be available exclusively on Origin. At Gamescom we caught up with Bioware creative officer Dr. Greg Zeschuk, and asked him whether The Old Republic's Origin exclusive status would have a negative effect on the game.

"Once you get into the digital space it's pretty easy to get stuff," says Dr. Greg. " I don't think packaging it on Origin is going to hurt it in any way - we'll have such reach and demand that I think it'll be fine. Our experience of working with Origin is that it's actually pretty slick and works well. I wouldn't say it's totally a commodity to sell digitally but you know that's an element of it, to create that digital download experience."

And remember, to get into The Old Republic when it opens, you'll almost certainly need to pre-order.

"We're going to be at capacity," Zeschuk warns. "One thing we're telling people is that if you don't pre-order a copy you may not even get in in the first month just because there's so many people on the servers that if you don't get it you may not play for a while."