Starcraft II Cost Money to Make, A Lot of Freaking Money

Starcraft was one of the most popular and successful PC games of all time, with the game selling over 11 million copies. Ever since the game debuted 12 years ago, fans have been waiting for a sequel and now that sequel is only weeks away. It's safe to say that Starcraft fans really want this game, but just how much do they want it? Do you think they'd be prepared to fork $100 million to see the game made?

That's the figure that's being thrown around in the Wall Street Journal via Gamespot (because I'm cheap and don't subscribe to the Journal). The article reports that Activision have spent over $100 million to develop the three-part sequel. What makes that figure even more impressive and mind blowing is the fact that $100 million only covers the cost of developing the game, it doesn't include the cost of marketing the game, which would probably be quite substantial. Just think about what the combined total for all costs involved with getting the game into your hands is, and you could probably buy a small nation.

To put that figure into perspective the much delayed Gran Turismo 5 is one of the most expensive games ever developed with a budget of about $60 million, nowhere near the $100 million of Starcraft II which is approaching the budget of Hollywood films.

Now some of you may be worried that Activision and Blizzard are taking a huge risk developing such an expensive game, or maybe some of you are hoping that this will be the one big Activision game that doesn't succeed, probably secretly so none of your friends beat you up. According to Activision there's nothing to fear from Starcraft II as CEO Bobby Kotick labeled the Starcraft franchise as one of the company's seven "pillars of opportunity." Now you may be wondering what the hell a "pillar of opportunity" is, apart from a rejected name for a Halo ship. According to Kotick a pillar of opportunity is a game that the company expects to generate between $500 million and $1 billion of operating profit for the publisher throughout its life. If you were wondering what the other pillars are, then they are Call of Duty, Guitar Hero, World of Warcraft, Diablo, Blizzard's new MMORPG, and Bungie's new intellectual property.

So even though Activision are investing huge amounts of money into Starcraft II, they are expecting, at minimum, to make back the development cost five times over! The faith Activision has in Starcraft II is insane, but then again it's Starcraft and it's being developed by Blizzard, so it's not really blind faith. Starcraft would surely have been one of the reasons why Activision partnered with Blizzard in the first place. Will you be helping Activision make back some of its colossal investment when the game hits stores in its first iteration on July 27?