How Much Did Blizzard Spend On StarCraft II?

[carlhenry]

[citation][nom]Smochina[/nom]Bla bla bla bla bla, No LAN. Who the hell cares about lan, you lan parties fans make like 1% of the total player base. There's a thing called internet in case you haven't heard, you can play over it so you don't have to carry your computer to your friend's house every day. But anyway, cry all you want, you'll still be in front of the store at 12 pm on the 27th. LOL[/citation]

how i wish you had friends... in real life. LAN parties are much enjoyable sharing drinks and stuff. plus, trashtalking on a higher level with your buddies is the best lol. but i do agree with you, i'll still buy SC2 with or without LAN.

 

[NuclearShadow]

I think SC II simply shouldn't count as a 100 million budget title. Since its really 3 standalone games. The majority of the second two games are already done simply because everything is done for them except for the single player campaigns and likely some voice work.

So since they are indeed standalone games and one will not require the others in any form of way and they have different release dates its only fair to say the development costs are 1/3rd of the 100 million the per game. Since the majority of the content is shared and what isn't shared (once again single player campaign and some voice acting)
is likely to be equal in size its only right to divide the costs up.

 

[Tamz_msc]

Delaying a game for 12 years will increase costs.

 

[JonnyDough]

[citation][nom]nisallik[/nom]Yeah, I know right? Terrans always get the short end of the stick. =\[/citation]

Never mind that they were (and arguably ARE the most powerful race in SC.

 

[teodoreh]

Haters gonna hate.

Blizzard is VERY careful about its customer base (LAN parties) and wrote several posts about it. Blizzard's lock will be much more sophisticated than Steam or Ubi's, and people will be able to play off-line.

Having a huge customer base in SC1, Blizzard did their best to satisfy nearly every request on SC2, and give balance to copy protection system / user protection system.

I've played the beta, and it's quite impressive. I can't wait for the full product, and for all those people who 'protest' well, get used to it, or don't buy it. After all, 7.000.000 Koreans don't give a crap about a 16y dude who refuses to understand that there's got to be an protection on Blizzard's investment..

 

[back_by_demand]

[citation][nom]dark_lord69[/nom]If they sell 10 million copies at $60 each.that's10,000,000 X $60 = $600,000,000Take the profit and subtract the cost of making it:$600,000,000 - $100,000,000 = $500,000,000If the sell ten million copies thier NET profit will be 1/2 a billion dollars but this game will sell world wide and likely more than 10 million. Also... This is just the wings of liberty game. Soon enough the other expansions will come out. with only a slight increase in the cost of making those as well. You are likely talking over a billion dollars in net profit.[/citation]
Blizzard don't pocket the whole $60 per copy, some goes to the retailer, shipping, warehousing, manufacturing, packaging, advertising, buying server hardware, software and bandwidth - from the profits around 20% goes to the developers and the rest goes to the pushlishers.

So they will make nowhere near $500 million, will still make serious bank but certainly not half a billion.

 

[jamesedgeuk2000]

Blizzard made roughly $550,566,069 from copies of WoW and its expansions plus they make $1,982,137,480 a year from WoW subscriptions not including the money they make from character/faction changes, realm changes and in game items.

You think they care about shelling out a few hundred million for Starcraft 2? the game could flop like Daikatana and they would still be well in profit lol

Hopefully somebody will make a SC2 mod to allow LAN play not long after launch, otherwise I wont bother playing it, I prefer multi-player to single player in RTS games, no decent multi-player mode no sale

 

[giovanni86]

No LAN play isn't a big deal, eventually they could release a patch for it. As for now i see no reason why me and my friends can't all connect to battle.net at my LAN party this July 31st. I got charter at 65mb's down so im safe to say there won't be any lag even if 6 of us are on the same internet line. My network is leet. 1 game, 2 expansions, more units possibly. I see nothing bad about it, they will be cheaper then this game coming out 7 days from now. And for all the wow haters shut it, i just re-activated my account its awesome =D

 

[jamesedgeuk2000]

[citation][nom]giovanni86[/nom]No LAN play isn't a big deal, eventually they could release a patch for it. As for now i see no reason why me and my friends can't all connect to battle.net at my LAN party this July 31st. I got charter at 65mb's down so im safe to say there won't be any lag even if 6 of us are on the same internet line. My network is leet. 1 game, 2 expansions, more units possibly. I see nothing bad about it, they will be cheaper then this game coming out 7 days from now. And for all the wow haters shut it, i just re-activated my account its awesome =D[/citation]

This explains the no LAN problem

"Also LAN might not matter to you but I liked the days of 3ms response time over LAN with my friends. When you factor 15ms or so for the mouse, 5ms or so for the screen, and 2ms or so for my computer to process thats already 25ms for every action I make to be processed. Which actually turned out fine as I could go up to 400APM without any problem (not that I ever played for extended periods of time at more than 150) but when you turn the latency to 50ms and MUCH higher in areas of poor connection then your talking 92ms. Which means if I go over 100 or so APM im fucked it cant keep up with my actions and completely screws up my gameplay. Now take pro starcraft players who average 300APM in a mtch and yes ITS A HUGE FRIKIN PROBLEM."

 

[teodoreh]

..but when you turn the latency to 50ms and MUCH higher in areas of poor connection then your talking 92ms. Which means if I go over 100 or so APM im fucked it cant keep up with my actions and completely screws up my gameplay. Now take pro starcraft players who average 300APM in a mtch and yes ITS A HUGE FRIKIN PROBLEM."

No it won't because you don't even know how the Battle.net validation will be done. Are you sure that Blizzard will have dedicated server for LAN matches, or that it will simply require a validation before actually using a PC from you LAN as a server?

 

[hok]

are some of you morons serious about "beating piracy" with this stupid battle net crap. do you really believe that this will even DENT the piracy of this game.... smochina you talk about China... if you live there then you must be blind... piracy will not end with a "milked network". piracy is so rampant in china you have retail stores in malls with fake crap... get real... no lan is the worst form of milking and blizzard is 100% guilty...

 

[jabliese]

Been waiting this long, I can wait another year or 2 for the $30 Battle Chest.

 

[irh_1974]

No one complained with WoW brought out Wrath Of The Liche King
All they have done is announce that there will be further content before the initial release instead of after people have played it for ages already.
How is this any differant?

 

[gm0n3y]

I'm buying on release day, but I'll be keeping an eye out for a LAN crack as I still really want LAN support.

Does anyone know if I buy the retail version of the game, can I just register the key with Blizzard and then download the game to my machine? I want a hard copy, but my DVD drive died about a year ago (haven't had a need to use it until now) and I don't feel like replacing it.

 

[shiroikaze]

[citation][nom]gm0n3y[/nom]I'm buying on release day, but I'll be keeping an eye out for a LAN crack as I still really want LAN support.Does anyone know if I buy the retail version of the game, can I just register the key with Blizzard and then download the game to my machine? I want a hard copy, but my DVD drive died about a year ago (haven't had a need to use it until now) and I don't feel like replacing it.[/citation]
I'm pretty sure you'll be able to. I registered my Starcraft CD-key via Blizzard Store and there's a download link via "Manage Games".

 

[gm0n3y]

[citation][nom]shiroikaze[/nom]I'm pretty sure you'll be able to. I registered my Starcraft CD-key via Blizzard Store and there's a download link via "Manage Games".[/citation]
I think I'm going to try it out. The worst that will happen is I won't be able to play it until I go out and get a new DVD drive.

 

[ksampanna]

I'm betting Crysis 3 or Half Life 4 suprasses that.

 

[lonewolfz24]

They are saying 100 million like its alot (it IS to US), but thats less than one months subsribsion revenue from wow.... really, you spend one months income to make this game....

 

[teodoreh]

[citation][nom]hok[/nom]are some of you morons serious about "beating piracy" with this stupid battle net crap. do you really believe that this will even DENT the piracy of this game.... smochina you talk about China... if you live there then you must be blind... piracy will not end with a "milked network". piracy is so rampant in china you have retail stores in malls with fake crap... get real... no lan is the worst form of milking and blizzard is 100% guilty...[/citation]

You don't have the slightest f*cking idea of what you're talking. If tomorrow everyone sold his software free of anti-piracy scheme, then the illegal copies would be 1000% more than today. Piracy will never end, but it can be reduced. And if you find Blizzard guilty, don't buy its product. Go play MAME.. Go go go!

 

[gm0n3y]

[citation][nom]teodoreh[/nom]You don't have the slightest f*cking idea of what you're talking. If tomorrow everyone sold his software free of anti-piracy scheme, then the illegal copies would be 1000% more than today. Piracy will never end, but it can be reduced. And if you find Blizzard guilty, don't buy its product. Go play MAME.. Go go go![/citation]
Any form of anti-piracy does not make it more difficult to pirate a game, it just pisses off legitimate users. If there was no anti-piracy scheme, people would pirate the same amount. Either way, to pirate you just download the game from a torrent site and it works, protection or not its exactly the same process.

 

[eddieroolz]

While $100million might be chump change to Activision/Blizzard, I'd hate to imagine a smaller scale studio trying to develop something like this.

 

[Guest]

You can't, just like you can hardly compete with Hollywood to make a major motion picture. Sometimes you can (Blair Witch) but it's very hard.

 

[Guest]

100 million is a PR number that includes a lot of other development for their other games. I think 25-50 million is more likely accurate.

And note that LAN was removed for one reason: to try subscriptions in korea, russia, brazil, etc.. If one can buy the game once for 20 bucks and play LAN, one wouldn't pay monthly.

 

[Guest]

Having expansion packs is ok, but the lack of LAN is lame..