Various sources are all trying to lay claim to having correctly analyzed what StarCraft 2 will do in sales this year. Two specifically, Mike Hickey from Janco Partners and Pacific Crest Securities' Evan Wilson are both within the 5-6 million copies sold range by the time we reach the new year. There have already been reports of StarCraft 2 selling 1.8 million copies on launch day so the estimations don’t seem like they will be too far off. Though this isn’t anything new for Blizzard, as they brought in 2.8 million on the first day with Wrath of the Lich King two years ago.What the future holds
Looking ahead to the future, a lot of the questions and answers could come from South Korea. With the current system in place for StarCraft: Broodwar it could become a very conflicting interest. Though a lot of the analysts haven’t thought of this to be a part of the equation for potential sales. This would be amazing for the fact that over the 10 years that the original was released, it sold just over 10 million copies. Mike Hickey is predicting that there could be upwards of 7 million copies sold this year, which could very easily by the one year anniversary of the game, dwarf the sales of the original.
You can't get higher than first
There had been a lot of gamers who had been telling people to vote StarCraft 2 a 1 on Amazon. Though it seems like all their cries were in vain as the game holds the first and second spot for sales. The standard edition sits atop the chart with its counterpart Collector’s Edition sitting peacefully in second above Xbox Gold membership and Halo: Reach.
Blizzard expects to cash in on digital downloads
If it wasn’t enough that Activision Blizzard can expect up to 7 million copies this year, they also pull in quite a bit of profit from each game sold. There are a lot of royalties involved in selling a game, if it’s on a console there’s an $8-9 charge. Each copy that gets sold by a retailer, they get 20% of the sell value of the game. With the reports before of around 31 percent being downloaded digitally that’s more money going back to the company. As to what that means for the future could mean a few things; more tournaments being held by Blizzard with cash value. The possibility of the expansions not being as much (though this is highly doubtful) or even big content updates. Only time will tell if Blizzard can live up to their legacy or if fans will send them back to the void.
Links
Gamespot.com - Pacific Crest Securities' anaylsis
Amazon.com - Video game sales
