StarCraft II estimated to sell 4 million copies in 1st quarter, I say first month

Gamasutra posted an article about analysts estimating that StarCraft II could sell four million copies during its first quarter of release. Four million copies is the minimum amount I feel that Blizzard will sell during the first month.

“Modern Warfare 2 may be successful enough to offset any potential StarCraft II delay, Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter told Gamasutra. "[Modern Warfare 2] has the potential to sell an extra four million copies this year due to the big advertising push, so [a StarCraft 2 delay] could net out to zero financial impact."

 A little further down in the article:

“Pachter said that when the game (Starcraft 2) does ship, he expects it to sell four million units in its opening quarter. At $40 wholesale ($50 retail), that would equate to $160 million in revenues for Activision Blizzard. Operating profit could hit $80 million, he said, or 4 cents per share.”

The comments in the article are mixed, some on the side that four million is far too conservative a number, others believing that the numbers are hyper-inflated.

Knowing the history of StarCraft from its release in 1998 to its emergence as an ESport in South Korea and the current state of anticipation in the community, I am very confident in my own personal claim that StarCraft II will vastly outsell the original.



One key understanding that escapes the people doubting the four million number is that StarCraft came out in a different gaming era. Blizzard was big back then, but nowhere near its current status today. The WarCraft series was more of a cult game than anything.  When StarCraft came out, it had a similar cult status. This cult following has exploded to encompass the entire globe, and StarCraft is no longer a cult game but rather the best and most popular Real-Time-Strategy game of all time. StarCraft is also a 10-year-old game with practically every single veteran player awaiting the day one arrival of the sequel. Doubters are grossly underestimating this anticipation.

StarCraft sold over 1 million copies during its first couple months of release.  Soon after StarCraft started the phenomenon of ESports in Korea, and now sales in Korea constitute almost 50% of total sales of the game. Current figures put total StarCraft sales worldwide at over 10 million.  Illegal copies probably double that figure.

Assuming that StarCraft gamers in the nation of South Korea alone buy StarCraft II in month one, that makes my four million copies sold estimation seem vastly conservative. 4.5 million was the number of legal StarCraft copies purchased in Korea since back in 2007.

Another part of the equation that doubters have forgotten about is the new generation of gamers across the globe that have grown up watching their older siblings play StarCraft and all the gamers that will be new to the StarCraft series. No figures are available for me to state numbers, but I would assume both those groups would constitute at least over one million first month SC2 purchasers.

These next generation gamers will be mostly coming from the World of WarCraft community and other RTS communities such as DoW, Warhammer etc… I predict a huge vacuum will happen in other RTS gaming communities once StarCraft II goes gold, but I’ll save that for another article

If just 10% of the current WoW subscriber base of 12 million worldwide switches over to StarCraft 2, that is 1.2 million just from one other game.


Time to leave this up to discussion…

What are your thoughts on StarCraft 2 first year of release game sales?

» View Original