EPTOn the other hand, you won't be able to do it with starcraft 2 for years after the release. So even if assuming only the people who played starcraft1 will buy starcraft 2. That is still a huge market pool
WSJ Article on SC2 - Page 4
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LSB
United States5171 Posts
On the other hand, you won't be able to do it with starcraft 2 for years after the release. So even if assuming only the people who played starcraft1 will buy starcraft 2. That is still a huge market pool | ||
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Ossian
Sweden88 Posts
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starcat
66 Posts
On July 18 2010 00:40 LSB wrote:So even if assuming only the people who played starcraft1 will buy starcraft 2. That is still a huge market pool I would say thats a significant assumption. | ||
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jester121
10 Posts
Also I don't doubt the $100 million figure at all -- figure just in several years' salaries for developers, artists, animators, sound and voice-over people, testers/QA, hardware guys, network guys, customer service people, and all the back office expenses as well. Add on buying servers, paying for bandwidth, and painting jetliners, and suddenly you're talking about real money.  | ||
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DTown
United States428 Posts
On July 18 2010 00:47 jester121 wrote: Sometimes people don't think about all the goes into the business transactions involved in them swiping the credit card and carrying a game home from the store. As has been pointed out, the retail outlet gets a cut, and there are shipping, order fulfillment, packaging, marketing, and a ton of other costs involved. To say that Blizzard ends up with $55 per copy straight to the bottom line seems naive. Also I don't doubt the $100 million figure at all -- figure just in several years' salaries for developers, artists, animators, sound and voice-over people, testers/QA, hardware guys, network guys, customer service people, and all the back office expenses as well. Add on buying servers, paying for bandwidth, and painting jetliners, and suddenly you're talking about real money. Don't forget taxes! They mentioned in the article that SCII gets better profit margins than most of Acti-Blizz other video games (probably not true for WoW?), so lets look at A-B profit margins. They have been all over the place in recent history, but have an average of around 12-15%. So let's say Starcraft makes 20% margins. There you have it $60*.2= $12 per copy sold that Activision-Blizzard will realize in net profit. Obviously an estimate but probably not too far off from the truth. | ||
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Go0g3n
Russian Federation410 Posts
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Dreadwave
Netherlands254 Posts
On July 17 2010 05:12 Paramore wrote: Yeah, there are alot of people crying shame about Activision on TL.net, but I myself am a huge Activision fan. I loved Mechwarrior 2, 3 and 4. Activision only developed and published Mechwarrior 2, Activision had nothing to do with Mechwarrior 3 and 4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_BattleTech_games#Video_and_computer_games | ||
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unit
United States2621 Posts
On July 16 2010 13:20 holy_war wrote: We only have 2 PC gaming companies that's worth a shit right now: Valve and Blizzard. But the problem with both is that they release games very slowly and not very often, but all the games they make are quality games. Hopefully companies like BioWare and others can step to the plate and make quality PC exclusive games (which is important). imo Infinity Ward USED to be on that list, since their games showed that they did care.........then they kinda got owned on modern warfare 2, and in addition to them getting owned by it....activision killed the game (at least on PC...but i dont use console so idc about how well it did there) | ||
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Ciryandor
United States3735 Posts
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0mar
United States567 Posts
On July 16 2010 13:09 Random_0 wrote: 4. All of this occurs against a backdrop of falling sales and profits in PC gaming in general. Most analysis don't have any Steam numbers other than a top10 list put out by Valve every month. It includes no hard numbers, so it's impossible to tell how up or down PC gaming is. Most developers are pleasantly surprised when they release games on Steam at how much they actually do sell. Just a minor nitpick. | ||
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NotJack
United States737 Posts
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Famehunter
Canada586 Posts
On July 18 2010 03:28 0mar wrote: Most analysis don't have any Steam numbers other than a top10 list put out by Valve every month. It includes no hard numbers, so it's impossible to tell how up or down PC gaming is. Most developers are pleasantly surprised when they release games on Steam at how much they actually do sell. Just a minor nitpick. On that topic, I wonder why blizz is nt putting any of their games on steam. they would make tons more monney. Anyone know a logical explaination as to why Blizz would refuse extre $$$ just so they can have control of the sales with their own webstore? | ||
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Go0g3n
Russian Federation410 Posts
On July 18 2010 03:28 0mar wrote: Most analysis don't have any Steam numbers other than a top10 list put out by Valve every month. It includes no hard numbers, so it's impossible to tell how up or down PC gaming is. Most developers are pleasantly surprised when they release games on Steam at how much they actually do sell. Just a minor nitpick. Doesn't really matter. You can make up sales numbers Steam generates with 22 million active users, add all conventional PC game sales, all MMO sales and it still will be lower than console sales for the corresponding period, and by consoles in this case i only mean PS3 and 360, not even the Wii, Ps2 (which is very alive still) and portables. Both these numbers combined (console and PC) get simply trumped into the middle of next week by the amount of downloads from the 15-20 world's most popular torrent trackers alone. On that topic, I wonder why blizz is nt putting any of their games on steam. they would make tons more monney. Anyone know a logical explaination as to why Blizz would refuse extre $$$ just so they can have control of the sales with their own webstore? Because when you are launching an exclusive unified platform for all Multiplayer, social and financial interaction throughout all your games for the next decade you probably don't want to use the one of your competitor. | ||
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Wr3k
Canada2533 Posts
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Santriell
Belgium151 Posts
On July 16 2010 13:09 Random_0 wrote: 1. Blizzard spent more than $100 million developing SC2. I wouldn't be surprised if this was grossly exaggerated, as is usually done by video game companies. Do you even realize what 100 million dollars are ? It's a third of the selling price of a SKYSCRAPER, meaning 100M can very well mean half its building value. There is just no way a game, no matter how good looking or innovative it is, costs this much. I can see this kind of money being shelled in super high-end software like Maya or 3dMax but definitely not a game (much less starcraft 2 which isn't really technologically impressive). For example Heroes of newerth, which has on-par if not better physics, more or less the same graphical quality and a MUCH better netcode cost approx 4 millions. | ||
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NotJack
United States737 Posts
On July 18 2010 03:47 Santriell wrote: I wouldn't be surprised if this was grossly exaggerated, as is usually done by video game companies. Do you even realize what 100 million dollars are ? It's a third of the selling price of a SKYSCRAPER, meaning 100M can very well mean half its building value. There is just no way a game, no matter how good looking or innovative it is, costs this much. I can see this kind of money being shelled in super high-end software like Maya or 3dMax but definitely not a game (much less starcraft 2 which isn't really technologically impressive). Businesses don't grow linearly; when there is more success there is also more improvement to take advantage of that success. Halo 3 which broke all the records when it was released 3 years ago cost 60 million to make. You're right that it's always overestimated, but it's not exactly out of the ballpark anymore. | ||
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cocosoft
Sweden1068 Posts
On July 16 2010 13:09 Random_0 wrote: It had a few tidbits I hadn't heard about: 1. Blizzard spent more than $100 million developing SC2. 2. They expect a *profit* of between $500 million and $1 billion in operating profit over the lifespan of the game. 3. One of the main points of beta testing was to "migrate" WoW players to play SC2. 4. All of this occurs against a backdrop of falling sales and profits in PC gaming in general. Yes, all 4 points making sense, especially the third point, lol. These can all be speculated. On July 16 2010 13:11 Kvz wrote: ...which costs money too to develop.you forgot that they're selling sc2 in a trilogy as well  | ||
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Go0g3n
Russian Federation410 Posts
On July 18 2010 03:47 Santriell wrote: I wouldn't be surprised if this was grossly exaggerated, as is usually done by video game companies. Do you even realize what 100 million dollars are ? It's a third of the selling price of a SKYSCRAPER, meaning 100M can very well mean half its building value. There is just no way a game, no matter how good looking or innovative it is, costs this much. I can see this kind of money being shelled in super high-end software like Maya or 3dMax but definitely not a game (much less starcraft 2 which isn't really technologically impressive). For example Heroes of newerth, which has on-par if not better physics, more or less the same graphical quality and a MUCH better netcode cost approx 4 millions. It's simple maths, 7 years, 40-50 developers (including B.net 2.0) @ 60k/yr minimum (prolly avr 70-80), 10$m+ on promotion (could easily be double that), sound, animation (Avatar-like animation costs ~$40k per frame or $1 million per minute) and int property on writing. It's not the first game to cost ~$100m and certainly not the last one, you can Google the most expensive games, SW:TOR is next one with $100m budget, WoW was $60 million and that was 6 years ago (5 years development) and there really were no graphics. Also HoN looks no way near as good as SC2, more like the third War III expansion. | ||
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cocosoft
Sweden1068 Posts
On July 18 2010 03:58 Go0g3n wrote: It's simple maths, 7 years, 40-50 developers (including B.net 2.0) @ 60k/yr minimum (prolly avr 70-80), 10$m+ on promotion (could easily be double that), sound, animation (Avatar-like animation costs ~$40k per frame or $1 million per minute) and int property on writing. It's not the first game to cost ~$100m and certainly not the last one, you can Google the most expensive games, SW:TOR is next one with $100m budget, WoW was $60 million and that was 6 years ago (5 years development) and there really were no graphics. Also HoN looks no way near as good as SC2, more like the third War III expansion. ROFL What? People bringing in HoN into the discussion?? Seriously. "HoN has better physics than SC2"? Are you freakin serious? SC2 uses Havoc. And HoN didn't pull of anything but a WC3 clone, specifying in DotA, with another net-code architecture (potentially better) and updated graphics. Also sorry Go0g3n for directly quoting you.. I think that you were needed in the post too. | ||
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Santriell
Belgium151 Posts
For instance the few firsts units in HoN were the disciple and magebane, contrast that with say the marine and the marauder and try to honestly sell me that they're designed/look better ? Your clone argument is illogic seeing as more than half of SC2 is a direct clone of the first one, only with a better engine so they didn't "pull much" either :-|. | ||
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