Last week The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) broke the ‘news’ that StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty had reached a development cost of US$100 million (±R743 000 000). The story was quickly picked up and spread around the Web, including a run on MyGaming.
WSJ has since issued a retraction on their published figures and Blizzard has also sent out a mass PR mail attempting to quash the rumour. “Blizzard Entertainment has never disclosed the development cost of StarCraft II, and for competitive reasons, we will not do so,” read the statement.
However, the US$100 million figure can apparently be attributed to World of WarCraft development costs – a budget worthy of a blockbuster movie production. It’s not unheard of for a game to reach such lofty development costs, with Grand Theft Auto IV currently holding the official title of the most costly development (which is US$100 million coincidentally).
Since Activision Blizzard will not disclose development costs, and with the game not technically complete until the other two chapters have been released, the total development costs can probably not even be finalised yet.
The original StarCraft is among the top selling games of all-time, having shifted over 11 million copies globally. If StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty can emulate that success with an average global price of US$60 (±R450), Activision Blizzard stands to make US$660 000 000 (±R4 905 000 000) in sales revenue.
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