StarCraft II Sells 1.5 Million Copies in 48 Hours

August 3, 2010 By Ryan Fleming

Blizzard’s sci-fi strategy game StarCraft II has officially become the fastest selling real-time strategy game of all time, after selling 1.5 million copies in the first 48 hours.

It is officially a hit. In just 48 hours, StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty has managed to equal the sales of the original game’s entire first year of release, with 1.5 million copies sold worldwide. The game moved over 1 million games in the first 24 hours alone, making it the the best selling launch title of the year for the PC, as well as the fastest selling real-time strategy of all time. More in-depth sales figures will have to wait, as the game has been out for only one week.

The original StarCraft sold more than 11 million copies in the 12 years between games, and if projections hold, the sequel could reach that same milestone within the next year or two.

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty was launched on July 27 in North America, Europe, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, The Philippines, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau.

“We launched StarCraft II in 11 different languages and on 5 different continents because we wanted to make sure as many players as possible were able to log on and play on day one,” said Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime said in a press release.

Check out our in-depth StarCraft II review here.

Showing 13 comments

mee at 3:33pm 2nd September 2010 Did anyone read the artical on the expanions? It said they would release at roughly 30 dollars each,
thatcanadianguy at 7:56am 6th August 2010 I pre-ordered the regular edition, but splurged and got the collectors edition. Financially speaking, not a smart move, but worth every penny.
Raven at 1:19am 4th August 2010 Proud SC2 Collector's Edition Pre-Order here, and don't regret it one bit!
Guest at 1:14am 4th August 2010 Just wait till you have to fork over another $120 for the other parts of the game,.. What croc of corporate bulls&%# blizzard has turned into.
1. Patrick at 2:28am 4th August 2010 Its not very different from buying Starcraft and Brood War separately. The Wings of Liberty campaign alone is about as long as all 3 campaigns of starcraft 1 without the expansion, if not longer. It also has a lot more replay value from different difficulty modes, achievements, and branching missions and tech trees. It was disappointing not to get a campaign for all 3 races at once, but after playing the campaign I'm not complaining.
2. Satisfied Consumer at 3:04am 4th August 2010 I don't understand people sometimes. Blizzard is a company that has to pay their employees ontop of making a profit to keep the company alive, not to mention they are doing all of this before they see a single dime for the game they are developing. So lets look at the bare basic cost that go into a game so that you can understand why/how it's setup and stop spouting off at the mouth about something you don't think about.
3. Satisfied Consumer at 3:05am 4th August 2010 The dev team (I'll low-ball it and say about 500 people, blizzard currently employees over 4,600 people) probably spent well over 60000 hours (which is about 28.8 years working a normal 40 hr work week) working on this game. They are all probably salary so we'll split them into 3 categories: Leads making about $70k, Mids making about $45k, and Drones making about $30k. If you split it accordingly, you'd have 15% or 75 of your work force as leads, about 35% or 175 as mids and 50% or 250 as drones. So that comes out to roughly $20,625,000 a year just on your teams salary. That doesn't even include your voice-acting, the music team, and various other teams that go partisipate in making a game. The game was announced in 2007, so just working from that date alone you're looking at over $61,875,000 in core salary requirements. They've probably been working on it a lot longer then 3 years though. Not to mention other thing like the cost of putting together the collectors edition material and the core materials for making regular retail copies and you're looking at a pretty big investment that's all coming out upfront.
  1. Niruen at 3:19am 4th August 2010 While I am not nearly as informed as "Satisified Consumer" (above) and all the numbers. $61M sounds solid and researched, but I believe that to be perhaps only 1/3 the overall cost. I wish I could cite my source, but alas my memory escapes me. However, I recall reading that the game was the most expensive in history to produce and cost nearly $200M (including some advertising I believe). Which equates to that of a feature film budget. I have no problem with a company - Blizzard in this case - making money. That is after-all what companies exist to do. So to the person that thinks that Blizzard has "joined the corporate 'bull****' ", you are absolutely correct. They have a product, they market it, we buy it. If you don't like that arrangement, I believe you are free to develop your own version and hand it out absolutely free. Best of luck to you.
    
    Satisfied Consumer at 3:49am 4th August 2010 I didn't know it cost nearly $200 million, I was just throwing out some figures I know of about the industry. I have several friends who are devs for SoE and Blizzard which is why I know a little about what goes into it. But wow, that's a lot of money going into it.
  2. poopinmy pants at 7:01am 9th October 2010 Mids making 45k? That's a lot less than I made right out of college as a mech. eng., software engis get paid about the same as I do. More like 70k for drones and 180k for leads. Dumbass.........
4. Satisfied Consumer at 3:05am 4th August 2010 Just in the opening week sales of the game (we'll average between retail ($60) and collectors ($100) editions at $75) they made roughly $112,500,000 which is just under double the salary requirements. So yeah, before you go bashing on Blizzard for trying to survive and continue to bring us amazingly put together and well thought out games, do the math and the homework on what it cost to put together these games. Now, the game itself was amazingly developed, the campaign gives you an amazing story build up that, IMHO, is the same if not more then what SC and Brood War did and I am egerly looking forward to the next expansions and I don't doubt that blizzard will delivery. I know I'm a rare one in saying that I'll probably spend hours upon hours playing the campaign because of all the twist and turns and complexities and endless options on how to complete it that it'll be awhile before I'm complete satisfied after the 12 year wait. It was well worth the $60 I didn't really have.
Abysis at 1:03am 4th August 2010 I 'm one those 1.5 million too and happy with the game. Preordered my copy in April but I wanted collector's Edition since I got World of Warcraft Account as well.
Dan Gaul at 12:10am 4th August 2010 I'm one of those 1.5 million and proud of it. Pre-ordered mine back in June I believe.