While not directly related to The Old Republic, this bit of analysis by Games Industry is anything but good news for the floundering MMO. The stock trend for publisher Electronic Arts is not going in a good direction.

Electronic Arts’ stock has lost almost 40 per cent of its value since the start of this calendar year – and in fact, since the middle of last holiday season (around November 2011) the company’s stock has been in a steady decline which has now wiped close to 50 per cent off EA’s valuation. It’s not a decline as sharp as THQ’s, but it represents a much larger loss of value – THQ’s market capitalisation is only around $50 million, whereas even after this enormous loss of value, EA is still capitalised at around $4 billion.

Games Business put together a rather telling graph comparing EA’s performance to the NASDAQ index and another pair of publishers. It’s not pretty.

While Electronic Arts isn’t alone in the downward trend (Hello, Take Two Interactive), it’s not keeping up with one of its chief competitors in Activision-Blizzard. Worse, it’s not keeping pace with the NASDAQ composite index. But here’s the scary thing, see where the downward trend begins for EA? That’s right about when The Old Republic debuted, the most expensive undertaking in EA history. How much of TOR’s stumbles have fueled EA’s trouble isn’t fully known, but it certainly has contributed.