Search$100 million USD spent for developing StarCraft 2
Posted by Radoslav "Nydra" Kolev 1 year ago
A recent article, published in the Wall Street Journal, states that Activision Blizzard have spent $100 million dollars while developing the forthcoming StarCraft 2.
In addition, those costs do not include any marketing activities and advertising and were solely used for the mechanical development of the game. This makes the total expenses even larger.
Activision Blizzard, however, have some aces of theirs to help them cover the costs and make profit of the game. First of all, the sequel, as we all know, will be divided into three different parts which will make the final income much bigger. Furthermore, in South Korea the StarCraft 2 franchise is extremely popular and the country itself is a huge marketing opportunity for large sales. The new Battle.net 2.0 also helps the guys at Blizzard, through which they can promote their new RTS to World of Warcraft player as well, widening the target customer audience.
“
We’ve brought in a lot of new players in the beta testing who’ve been playing World of Warcraft but have never tried Starcraft,” said Mike Morhaime in an interview for the Wall Street Journal issue in question.Activision Blizzard will start regaining their costs on July 27th when the full game will be released.
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| INCgamers - Source |
| Comments \ Paging |
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| not many |
| lot of cash.. |
| $100 million USD and no chat, epic fail I'd say. |
| That's alot of money. What exactly have they been spend on? Servers and paychecks for the programmers and artists? |
| #3 lol! True |
| $100 million USD. Redundant statement is redundant. |
| The sources seem weak. Generally with blizzard their biggest budget comes from the cut scenes. If the # is legit then it was largely from the new infrastructure they build for b.net which isn't just sc2 related, as well as the new engine which they could license out after if they wanted. |
| well one good thing is that finally wow has benefited the rest of the community :))))) #3 thats a pretty good price for fb tho cos most of us get it for free but not blizzard :DDD |
| 100 milion and B.net 2.0 is still bad ... makes me a sad panda : ( |
| 100 million and 20 million for crap ... damn no chat for 100 million dollar xD |
| Not much if you take a look at the profit of WoW per month :3 |
| 100 million for this shit? i can do it with 5 dollars better than this |
| #12 battlenet 2.0, yes, if its that u talk about :D i could fall on my keyboard and it would be better |
| C'mon kids, there is going to be chat in first patch after release..We dont need ur NO CHAT IM GONNA DIEEEE comments in every blizzard news. |
| #14 I agree with you , this kids are allways crying and complaining about things, just grow up kids! |
| btw, will Starcraft 2 cost something each month like WOW? |
| and they think i will buy sc2... i never give 60 euro for a game! gl |
| 100 million bucks i would be happy even with the 1 % of this money ;) if u count with 40 bucks average they have to sell 2,500,000 disc to be in zero well i gonna take 1 so 2,499,000 left gl blizz #14 exactly / i dont know why those people cant understand that its only beta... how many more changes will come in future? balance and options #16 hope not ( i cant belive they could make this) |
| No , this is not a MMORPG game so it wont cost anything monthly |
| From what I understand, this means that the other 2 parts are done as well? |
| Wish they had a subscribtion. Best would be if they had a subscribtion for the B.net account, so you could play all their games with just one montly fee. |
| Heck, no subscription please! They should be more than happy with the money they make from all the mindless WoW players. Leave SC2 alone! |
| #14 and #15 just cos u dont have ppl to talk to. haters gunu hate |
| #20 I doubt that they are ready but the majority of the expenses go for making the engine, the new b.net and so forth... The other 2 parts will be like expansions and will not cost THAT much |
| #24 In theory, yeah. But taking in consideration that most of the current engine was already present in WC3, I don't think that the wast majority of the money went into that. Also, I don't really think that they are telling us the total truth... I'm quite sure that 100 mil. also includes publicity and everything else ( especially hardware... The development itself is not likely to get to such an amount ). |
| well its rly much money. but they´ll make a big win out of this game. |
| Well, if it's true and this number DOES NOT include anything but development it may very well be the most expensive game ever made (GTA 4 for example is the current record holder with a bit over 100 mil) |
| Exactly :) Anyway, good for them! They'll surely get loads of money from the game... I can hardly wait to get my hands on all three Collectors Editions. |
| How did they manage to spend that much money? |
| pretty sure 100mil is like 1/2 of a monthly fee from all its subscribers.. |
| SC2 doesnt even have the appearence of a game that should cost that much to develope. As far as coding goes its really quite a basic game to make. I cant possible see how they spent 100 mill unless 50% of that was waste. |
| if they sell 1 million copies at 30 usd, thats 0.5% of the european population, and they are selling to the entire world... i think blizzard is gonna make a but load of money |
| Wasted. I am not impress by SC2 after 10 years of waiting, maybe 2 years later it will get better |
| incredible amount of money, cant believe it! |
OMG! 100 MILLION  |
| This is quite insane :D Wish I had 10% of that :D |
| #29 dustin browder gotta have his hamburgers :) on a serious note i think its a good investment and if blizzard dont great great quality on this game they might risk destroying the wc3, sc2 and the sc1 scene at the same time #36 rofl :DD |
| Considering what they have made already off BlizzCON, tee-shirts and collectibles, they have probably already covered this investment and then some in profits....without selling even one game disk... Broodwar has sold something like 15 million copies as of now, but that's been 12 years, but around 2/3 of them sold in the first 2 years. So if blizzard sells 10 million copies in 2 years, they will probably bring in around 300 million or so, depending on what price they are selling the game to the retail companies and taking into account that the price will come down slightly after a year or so and then drastically after 2 or 3 years. All told, as of about 5 years after release, they will likely bring in around 500 million from Starcraft 2 disk sales and "digital download" sales alone, not counting merchandising and event fees they have already made. |
| lets say on the safe side blizz has 10,000,000 subscribers to wow paying $20/month thats 200,000,000 / month I am sure there monthly costs arent much over what few million? 100 mill to blizz is like coffee money to me they can cover it without caring I am glad they thinking about the product being great not that the cost = gains in shortterm If e-sports takes in the west and sc2 is at the fore front well then they will really start to bring in the big bucks :P |
| #18 2.500.000 -1 = 2.499.999 |
| #18 you fail at Math super hard :)))))))))))) omg 100kk thats but, if you consider for how long Blizzard have been making SC2 its quite possible to spend that much :D but yeah, Bnet 2.0 thumbs down, not the best waste of money I've ever seen  |
| #41 +1 hahahah i just looked who will notice |
| why do you want chat channels? just play sc2 for fun if you want to make friends go use fb,hi5,myspace,twitter,etc |
like holywood movie...  but it will pay off i guess |
| #43 or u can actually get real life friends?, the possitive sides of real life friends it that you can count on em even when your internet is down.... |
| #45 naa, real social life is overrated in the face of the "new" world :) |
| 100 kk is a loot of money LOL |
| Money does not make the game good. I'd like to see the costs for SC and SC:BW. I guess that would be like 1KK bucks. |
| no chat cuz they have a contract with fakcing Facebook..... |
| 100 mil $ ? yeah but they cant even invest 1 mil $ in esports ¿ |
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