@zeromous, Not true. Although the marketbase has increased each year SC1 has been on sale. Most of its sales took place early in its lifetime. As the marketbase increased SC1 sales did not benefit to a large degree from the very recent surge in the videogame industry. As of 2005, StarCraft and Brood War combined had already shipped over nine million copies.
You may think RTS is niche but it is not. Tons of RTS games come out all the time & garner respectable sales. More importantly, Blizzard games go beyond their genres. Blizzard games step beyond "niche". MMORPGs were niche in comparison to before what WoW accomplished. That is the nature of Blizzard. Blizzard games don't need a precedent to reach a high sales figure. Why don't you provide info on all the genres that have not broken 10 million in sales... And SC1 will likely break 10 million in sales as it's almost there already & still being sold widely.
Where is sub 32% growth (more accurately 25%) going to come from over a 10 year old game? Worldwide is where it will come from. It will come from the much larger gaming userbase that there is in 2008-2009 compared to what it was in 1998-2003, which is pretty accurately when the far majority of SC1's 9.5+ million sales took place. Could actually be even 1998-2002 or 2001.
It will also come from the fact that SC1 had little fanfare during its years in development and at its release compared to what SC2 has going for it. SC1 was actually chastised when it was first reported on by gaming journalists. Same deal with Blizzard. They were popular back then but nowhere near as popular as they are today.
Why are you bringing Lineage into this discussion? What I've read shows that SC1 has obliterated Lineage in sales WW & Lineage never reached over 3.35 million subscribers where that includes WW even though most were in Korea. And how is Lineage ancient? It came out the same year as SC1. How is it more popular? It's sales are worse, I don't believe it has a TV show, and it's from a different genre.
How does CoD not count?!?! You said as part of your earlier argument: "No sequel in recent memory has seen sales growth of 40-50% (which is what we are currently projecting at a hair under 14 million)."
Which is not true. Maybe you want to now requote yourself and add all the technicalities to what you mean?
Game sales in general for the best titles have been going up compared to what they used to be. And you expect SC2 to see much less growth than all the other top titles of the current era. That's backwards.
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Not true. Although the marketbase has increased each year SC1 has been on sale. Most of its sales took place early in its lifetime. As the marketbase increased SC1 sales did not benefit to a large degree from the very recent surge in the videogame industry. As of 2005, StarCraft and Brood War combined had already shipped over nine million copies.
You may think RTS is niche but it is not. Tons of RTS games come out all the time & garner respectable sales. More importantly, Blizzard games go beyond their genres. Blizzard games step beyond "niche". MMORPGs were niche in comparison to before what WoW accomplished. That is the nature of Blizzard. Blizzard games don't need a precedent to reach a high sales figure. Why don't you provide info on all the genres that have not broken 10 million in sales... And SC1 will likely break 10 million in sales as it's almost there already & still being sold widely.
Where is sub 32% growth (more accurately 25%) going to come from over a 10 year old game? Worldwide is where it will come from. It will come from the much larger gaming userbase that there is in 2008-2009 compared to what it was in 1998-2003, which is pretty accurately when the far majority of SC1's 9.5+ million sales took place. Could actually be even 1998-2002 or 2001.
It will also come from the fact that SC1 had little fanfare during its years in development and at its release compared to what SC2 has going for it. SC1 was actually chastised when it was first reported on by gaming journalists. Same deal with Blizzard. They were popular back then but nowhere near as popular as they are today.
Why are you bringing Lineage into this discussion? What I've read shows that SC1 has obliterated Lineage in sales WW & Lineage never reached over 3.35 million subscribers where that includes WW even though most were in Korea. And how is Lineage ancient? It came out the same year as SC1. How is it more popular? It's sales are worse, I don't believe it has a TV show, and it's from a different genre.
How does CoD not count?!?! You said as part of your earlier argument:
"No sequel in recent memory has seen sales growth of 40-50% (which is what we are currently projecting at a hair under 14 million)."
Which is not true. Maybe you want to now requote yourself and add all the technicalities to what you mean?
Game sales in general for the best titles have been going up compared to what they used to be. And you expect SC2 to see much less growth than all the other top titles of the current era. That's backwards.