Starcraft is arguably the most popular game of all time, and certainly one of the most enduring. Will the sequel live up to the original? Blizzard certainly thinks so, which would explain why the developer has spent over $100 million on the project thus far, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.
"There is no shortage of consumers for Starcraft," Activision Chief Executive Bobby Kotick said in an interview last month. "For a game that is more than 10 years old, there's millions of people still playing it.
Despite the big budget, Activision-Blizzard fully expects the Starcraft franchise to rake in up to ten times as much in profits. Kotick described Starcraft as one of the company's seven "pillars of opportunity" during an analyst meeting last month, and said that each pillar could deliver between $500 million and $1 billion of operating profit over its lifespan.
Interestingly, Starcraft II won't use a subscription model in the U.S., though the game will carry a monthly fee in other markets, such as Korea, WSJ reports.
Starcraft II will launch on July 27 for $60.
Comments are closed on this article
benicoletti
July 19, 2010 at 6:04pm
Well and for the record the 2nd phase of the beta testing concluded today ... can't wait for the 27th for all the pre orders they should have just left the beta open help to bring in more of a crowd on release day.
bluetorino1973
July 19, 2010 at 2:11pm
Why do other countries have to pay a monthly fee? That seems kind of odd. Does anybody think that after Starcraft 2 has been out for a year in the U.S. that they'll try to slap on the monthly fee that they are doing in the other countries? I just don't understand why they would do that. The game is not WoW so stop trying to slap on fees to play the damn game.
mesiah
July 19, 2010 at 4:44pm
You will never see a fee to play in the US. Although its perfectly fine to sell a fee based game and then go free to play later, you can't sell a game as free to play and then change it to a fee based model. That is not to say they won't try to charge a monthly fee for the expansions, but Wings of liberty will always be free to play in the US.
As for the fee to play in certain other countries, Starcraft is big business in places like South Korea. Starcraft 2 in south korea is a professional "sport" the way poker is in america. There is tons of money to be made on the game. Players persona generate a lot of revenue. If people are going to make money off of the game, you can bet blizz is going to make sure they continue to make money off of the people.
someuid
July 19, 2010 at 4:27pm
Since I don't have a subscription to the WSJ, I couldn't read the article in full.
I do know Starcraft I was hugely popular is South Korea, to the point there were paid professional teams that competed for prized in heavily advertised events (read: big money).
It is possible the overseas version has some sort of ranking system for players and teams and hence the monthly fee? Its hard to say since the WSJ didn't let the whole article be free.
I doubt they will tack on a monthly fee here in the US. There are too many other games one can play.
I Jedi
July 19, 2010 at 2:26pm
I would imagine that the U.S. is Blizzard's biggest consumer of its products; however, I, too, find it odd that a company wouldn't just charge right off the bat.
someuid
July 19, 2010 at 12:31pm
Does anyone know what kind of DRM Activision/Blizzard is going to laden Starcraft II with?
If it has something, does anyone know if the Steam version will not have it?
If they slap anything on it, I'll just keep playing AI War.
mesiah
July 19, 2010 at 4:52pm
battle.net is the only DRM they need. You have to sign up for a battle.net account. A games key can only be registered to a single account. And you have to sign in to battle.net before you play. Since the beta doesn't contain any of the single player matches I can not say whether or not disconnecting from the internet will halt single player game play, but it wouldn't surprise me if a constant connection to the internet is needed. If you remember, they ditched lan play all together from this game, now we can see it is because it is not possible to play the game without an internet connection.
I know a lot of people will complain about this DRM model, stating that it is unfair and a hassle to force people to have an internet connection to play a single player game. Personally, I don't mind it. Most of the world has some access to the internet these days. And with this model, if I lost my copy of the game it doesn't matter. I can always download the client from the companies site if I lose it. They can give it away all they want since it can't be played without a registered account.
praetor_alpha
July 19, 2010 at 2:53pm
I'd think the DRM would be battle.net.
And don't count on it coming out on Steam. Ever. No other Blizzard game is.
I Jedi
July 19, 2010 at 8:52am
I have never been a Starcraft fan, and infact I have never even given it much of a look at; however, upon this article, I decided to head over to Youtube, and take a look at some gameplay footage. I have to admit that Starcraft II looks very, very cool indeed. It reminds me of Warcraft III, but I know that Starcraft is probably way different in terms of gameplay, as compared to Warcraft III. Does anyone else plan on picking up a copy of this game? I just might, especially after the enticing gameplay video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaQfK3pDPcs
praetor_alpha
July 19, 2010 at 9:49am
I have been a long time fan of Starcraft. It was the ONLY game I
played for several years. When they announced the release date, I
preordered on Amazon a week later. Then the next Saturday, to my great
surprise, I find a beta key in my email.If you think you like
RTS, get Starcraft. It is to RTS what Half-life is to FPS.I'll
buy Starcraft 2! I'll buy it three times! (it's a trilogy, remember?)
armada439
July 19, 2010 at 9:40am
I will get this game, when its $30. I was in the beta and its fun, and I enjoyed SC1 too. But there are just too many flaws (imo) to spend $60 on it
Nycromes
July 19, 2010 at 1:07pm
You do know this is Blizzard right? The point of a Beta is to discover, fix, and test the fixes for bugs. Unless that isn't what you mean by flaws. Blizzard doesn't release a product without going over it fairly well, I don't really remember a blizz product in recent memory where I felt like I paid to be a beta tester which I can't say for pretty much any other game company. I will agree, $60 is a ton to spend on a PC game where there is sufficient competition (this RTS vs that RTS aren't so different anymore).
armada439
July 19, 2010 at 9:32pm
Whoa there son. Im not talking bugs, im talking gameplay flaws. To me, Blizz hasn't made a big enough step away from 1998 for the game to be worth that much. I have a high end rig, SC2 is completely watered down to run on POS korean computers - and US fanbois who haven't bought new computers since Windows XP came out. I mean seriously, It's nice that we can control 200+ units at a time; but completely useless when the damn camera is zoomed in so far you cant actually see more than 30 of them at once. That and the 200 pop limit cap is so droll...yeah I know its considered a bad game if you can actually get that far...but hell, we should at least be able to.
Right now, SC2 feels like nothing more than a total conversion mod...hasn't brought anything new to the table.
mesiah
July 19, 2010 at 4:37pm
WoW was pretty unplayable when it went live. It took a few months to smooth things out, but imo it has always been riddled with glitches that players just learn to live with.
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