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How Much Did Blizzard Spend On StarCraft II?

by - source: Tom's Hardware US

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty may top the chart as "most expensive game to develop."

So how much did it cost Blizzard to develop StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty over the last seven years? According to Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, the company has already dumped over $100 million into the highly-anticipated sci-fi RTS game, possibly making it one of the most expensive titles to date.

But the number shouldn't be surprising. Blizzard president Mike Morhaine said back in 2007--during the game's official unveiling--that the company really didn't have a budget to begin with. It seemed that an abundance of funds were on standby. "We'll spend as much time and resources as we need to make this game great," he said at the time.

Both Blizzard and analysts predict that consumers will quickly make up for the costs. "There is no shortage of consumers for StarCraft," said Kotick. "For a game that is more than ten years old, there's millions of people still playing it."

As for the analysts, they predict that StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty could sell five million units during its first year of release. We predict that the number will be even greater.

As it stands, StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty will beat out the development budget set aside for Grand Theft Auto IV--an alleged 100 million. Red Dead Redemption was also said to rack in a development cost of $100 million.

Kotick didn't specify whether Battle.net was part of the $100 million spent on the StarCraft II project.

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dillyflump 19/07/2010 22:22
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Fairly sure Blizzard will make back more than $100 million dollars on this game. I've been playing on the closed beta for a couple of months and its awesome. To sum it up it's like age of empires with spaceships :)

Cannibalsnail 20/07/2010 12:04
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With you on that one buddy. I mean no LAN, Real ID, 3 installments so they can leach more money off me, no chat rooms, horrible slow clunky battle.net system. WTF WERE THEY THINKING

sonnywoj 20/07/2010 02:11
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cybr 20/07/2010 04:51
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Protoss are expensive to build... Where'd they find all those crystals?

Cannibalsnail 20/07/2010 07:31
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sonnywoj :
Why does EVERYONE need to lan so bad?? Theres no effing difference! i dont know if you've played the beta but the battle.net system is pretty brilliant and thats only the effing beta.



Go play a game like League of legends and youll see what a client should look and feel like as well as what features are needed. Battle.net is trash.

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.

jamesedgeuk2000 20/07/2010 09:13
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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

Cannibalsnail 20/07/2010 09:51
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All top level Starcraft tournaments are done over LAN. The low levels are done over battle.net but to be anywhere near competitive you need to play over LAN. Ive never gotten close to 400 APM (250 maybe on a really good day) I mostly play at around 100. When I play over battle.net with anyone from a different country I get slowdown. Maybe your friend could beat me I never said APM made you a better player but when me and my friends are rocking some serious games and Im trying to focus fire from 3 different groups of units versus 3 groups of enemy units while dodging rockets and the server cant keep up Im going to get pissed as hell. So no Blizzard can collectively pull their heads out their asses of they lose my £50 and hopefully lots of other people.

Just so you know this is actually the lowest on my list of grudges against blizzard. Ever since the Activision merge that company has gone to shit.

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