Now the first starcraft was released in 1994 (my birth year!)and sold i think 10-11 million?
The played this play this game will be much older (13years) so thats going to lose people.
The only way i think it will sell really well blizzard need to advertise ALLOT with that id say it could each that figure.I would like to see how other people will think this will sell.
@ixaarii, The difference is that Blizzard has a reputation. Their game is one that people will buy. I don't think they are requiring top of the line computers, but theres no way most of the people over in Korea will be able to play it for a good couple of years unless they really take that into account, which would limit the overall game.
@pilias_simber, yes, but i believe way too often pc devepers think that way resulting in games that have higher requiremetns in the expectations of technology changing, but that results in less people playing their games at max settings/looking best on launch. I think i was reading recently about this developer conference where they were asked how often they upgrade their hardware. Most of them did it yearly, but it was underlined that while they, and hardcore gamers do others do so maybe only in 3-4 years. it seems to me there's been a slowdown in the hardware evolution because less people see the reason to trade in their perfectly good laptop for another for which they don't really see the boost most of the time (more cpus less used, ram which most of the time they dont need...)
Please keep in mind that Starcraft took a number of years to reach it's sales, it's likely Starcraft II will as well. It doesn't have to play well on modern low-end computers, the computers that can play it will one day be low-end computers and then the game will sell huge numbers. It will probably already do well in countries where more people have high performance PCs, like the US well before that.
wow! such huge numbers!My big worries for it to reach such success are: a)will the game run looking good on all hardwares? I think starcraft did so great because it ran amazingly great on every hardware and it's grandfather. But a lot of that was because the graphics was prerendered... can this still be done with 3d? Will it run looking great on a onboard card or a fx5200? I know i was even able to play starcraft ona 133mhz laptop... b)is the pc gaming market able to sustain such a big hit? I see a lot of the sales going to consoles recently and as they now have harddrives and internet so widespread this may happen even more. Of course this doesnt apply to strategy games... but still
anyway, huge numbers. Not saying they aren't justified, certanly not with blizzard behind them and the ladder chapnionships i imagine tehy'll make, just amazed at their hugeness
You know what, I'm a huge Starcraft fan and thus very excited about Starcraft II. However, I recently got out of the stock because, in my opinion, it has reached its peak for at least the next few months and, in my case, there was money to be made elsewhere.
Now I'm not saying people should jump boat on this, but I am offering a bit of insight here.
A ten million or so estimate, at this point in the game, given blizzard and starcraft's history is totally acceptable.
However, for this stock to go any higher at this point in the games development would be irrational and surprise me intensely because:
1) We simply don't know all that much about it. We've seen videos of gameplay and get a general sense, but in terms of specifics, we really don't know much, certainly not enough to skyrocket this out of the solar system.
2) many people have pointed to the voracity of the south Korean market. This is all well and good, and more than likely it will end up making up a large percentage of sales. However, it is simply way too soon to know whether or not the game will fly even in south korea. For a practical example, look at Valve and counter strike source. Highly anticipated, highly advertised and, overall, highly dismissed by much of the counter strike community who still continue to use the original counter strike over it. It is well within the realm of possibility that the south korean market might not take well to the sequel and stick instead to its older and more tried and true variation. If this were to happen, than a large chunk of the anticipated sales would dissipate quickly.
3) Finally, in all other markets, it is possible, though I admit unlikely, that the game may prove to be "nothing special". Now if this were to happen, I would likely poop my pants in distress, however at this time there is no way to know for sure that blizzard is on the right track.
All of these indicate to me that this stock will be staying right around where it is for a while to come,perhaps with some momentary fluctuations up and down. Your best bet, if you want to get in and see what happens - wait for a momentary dip, buy up and hope for the best in the long run. But for the most part it seems like, at least for a few months, it simply isn't worth the effort.
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South Korea is going to buy this game in droves, that alone might be 13 million. Their national anthem is the SC theme, I think.