Creutz: StarCraft 2 to sell 5m in first year

The first edition of the StarCraft 2 series, Wings of Liberty, is estimated to sell 5 million copies worldwide in the first year of release.

That is what the Vice President of Cowan and Company, Doug Creutz, believes. Gamesindustry.biz reports that the media and entertainment analyst based this on the ten million sold copies of StarCraft since over the last ten years.

Creutz also predicts StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty to hit the Chinese shelves in 2011. Blizzard joined up with the Chinese publisher NetEase back in 2008 to distribute the upcoming RTS.

Another entertainment analyst, Wedbush's Michael Pachter, believed back in February that StarCraft 2 will be sold in 6 million copies. Together with the launch of World of WarCraft: Cataclysm, Pachter predicts Blizzard's sale figure to rise up to 12 million games during 2010 counting in previously released games and legacy sales.