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.
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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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