StarCraft II Hits 800,000 Pre-Orders in the Americas - News

by VGChartz Staff , posted on 26 July 2010 / 21,435 Views

With just one day to go until release, VGChartz retail pre-order estimates have placed Starcraft II at nearly 800,000 units this week. The sequel to the 11-million-selling original released back in 1998, StarCraft II is easily one of the most eagerly-awaited PC releases of all time and VGChartz estimates that physical retail sales in the Americas alone in week one should be more than one million units.

With a worldwide release on the 27th and the game also available for digital download via Blizzard's Battle.net, VGChartz expects total worldwide week one sales to be around three million units - a significant amount expected to come from South Korea where the original game sold over 5 million units. Current VGChartz estimates place total games sales at 10-12 million units by the end of 2010 worldwide (including retail and digital sales).

The release of StarCraft II also marks a major milestone for VGChartz - for the first time since launch in 2005 retail sales of a PC title will be tracked along with console releases, a trend which will continue with major PC releases in the future.

Check back later in the week where VGChartz will bring preliminary sales figures for Starcraft II after launch.

20 Comments

allenfake (on 27 July 2010)

Hmm, after seeing those massive queues at launch that estimation seems a bit low.

Zkuq (on 27 July 2010)

@Baalzamon: I thought Blizzard stated that the development of Starcraft II didn't cost $100M, that the figure was for something else but definitely not the cost of SCII. That said, I'm sure making the game has cost a lot.

XiaoMay (on 27 July 2010)

I cant imagine how much it would sale without piracy !

heruamon (on 27 July 2010)

No surprise here...but these sales are going to be peanuts compared to Korean sales figures...lol.

Shoestar (on 27 July 2010)

@Baalzamon: True... but ur saying 40million on day one in the US alone. Starcraft 2 is expected to sell over 4mil copies on day one worldwide. In Asia, sales are expected to be close to 1.5m. Europe is gonna be just as big as US which should be about 1.5m day one each. That's at least 4mil. That's $200m.

Moreover, Worldwide 1st week should be over 6m.

sirroman (on 27 July 2010)

How will it compare with the MW2 launch? Hmmm...

Since Blizzard got the previous record sales my bet is: It shall be crushing, when digital copies are factored in?

Baalzamon (on 26 July 2010)

@Silver-Tiger: generally speaking, $40 million day one seems great, but not totally the case when it comes to starcraft 2. First off, that would be $40 million of revenue, where there are still lots of expenses excluding the production costs of the games including shipping to stores, taxes, etc. Second off, there was an article in our local paper recently stating that the development costs for Starcraft 2 were over $100 million.

Silver-Tiger (on 26 July 2010)

@ almcchesney: I don't know about you, but 1 million+ sales first day is console-level. In fact, most console games on both HD platforms aren't even able to pull this off. 1 million sales equals to 40 million dollars, which is very profitable. Developers can quit whining that the "evil" piracy is killing PC gaming.

zarx (on 26 July 2010)

pitty that none of the DD services are willing/able to release sales numbers as they are definitely half the picture when it comes to PC.

Anyhoo good to hear strong sales for starcraft 2 part 1.

Shoestar (on 26 July 2010)

I pre-ordered my collector's edition from Amazon.co.uk :) Few of my friends got the normal version as well.

iWarMachine (on 26 July 2010)

great news VGC. i'm looking forward to see the PC numbers!

MonstaMack (on 26 July 2010)

You gota factor in digital distribution and of course in store copies.
My Wal-Mart got in 47 copies of the PC version, and thats just one Wal-Mart. Throw in all the other Wal-Marts, Best Buys, etc. and you'll get a rough idea that this game should sell 3+ million on opening week alone.

Zkuq (on 26 July 2010)

Wohoo, PC sales!

Anyway, PC gaming is dead, right? ...Right?

zone16 (on 26 July 2010)

The sales won't include digital purchase which will probably be half of the sales. We will need to wait official numbers from Blizzard to know what it actually sold.

STEKSTAV (on 26 July 2010)

Good stuff VGC!

almcchesney (on 26 July 2010)

@ silver-tiger, compared to console sales it kinda is, but i still love my pc but its less for gaming and more for programming, my adobe cs5 master suite, and abilities as a media server.