StarCraft 2 Sells 1 Million on Launch Day, Declared 'Biggest PC Game Launch of the Year'

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StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty sold over one million copies on its launch day last week, developer Blizzard boasted today, declaring it the "biggest PC game launch of the year."

Passing the million mark made SC2 "the best-selling PC game of 2010 within its first 24 hours of availability," says Blizzard. Going on to sell over 1.5 million units total in the first 48 hours apparently broke "the record for fastest-selling strategy game of all time."

"We launched StarCraft II in 11 different languages and on 5 different continents because we wanted to make sure as many players as possible were able to log on and play on day one," said Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime. "We're pleased that so many people around the world have already picked up a copy of the game, and we look forward to welcoming even more players to Battle.net in the weeks and months ahead."

"StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is officially GameStop's fastest-selling PC game since Blizzard launched World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King in 2008," the retailer's senior VP of merchandising, Bob McKenzie, added in the announcement.

Unsurprisingly, industry analysts speculate that StarCraft II will sell by the bucketload. Several are predicting sales figures pushing six million units by the end of 2010. In the UK, the real-time strategy sequel has already surpassed the original's lifetime sales.

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty was released for PC and Mac on July 27. If you've yet to bite yet, check out our review. If you're struggling with your first steps on the rungs of the multiplayer ladder, our Brian has a few handy tips for you.

From The Chatty
  • reply
    August 3, 2010 7:07 AM

    "Biggest PC Launch since the last Blizzard launch"

    • reply
      August 3, 2010 7:13 AM

      Yeah, it's pretty much them and Valve anymore, isn't it?

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        August 3, 2010 7:23 AM

        Why would Valve be considered a PC company?

        All their recent money has been from console L4D and L4D2 sales. Shooters are a console genre.

        Blizzard is a PC company because they specialize in genres where consoles do (relatively) poorly. FFXI and Halo Wars can't compete with WoW and SC2.

        • reply
          August 3, 2010 7:29 AM

          You're so amazingly wrong it hurts

        • reply
          August 3, 2010 7:30 AM

          [deleted]

        • reply
          August 3, 2010 7:57 AM

          "Shooters are a console genre" Lol.

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            August 3, 2010 9:31 AM

            [deleted]

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              August 3, 2010 10:35 AM

              Depends on how you look at it. If you take out platform exclusives, it's totally on the PC; especially before the end of dedicated servers. You don't see pro-gaming on consoles for FPS, right?

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                August 3, 2010 4:40 PM

                What do you mean? Shooter pro-gaming has been Halo 3 or Gears of War since those titles were released. The real money tournaments have been console shooters for quite some time.

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          August 3, 2010 8:04 AM

          Valve is considered a pc company for various reasons despite offering console ports of their pc centric games. the major thing would be that they have steam as their ow digital distribution plattform that makes them the bulk of their money, its in their own interest to keep the pc plattform alive just to sell other developers games as well. their games especially the fps games are pc fps if not for the gameplay mechanics, the geometry of the maps or the the steam integration then for the continuous support of the games on the pc with content patches and events for free that barely make it to the console half a year later and have to be sold due to the microsoft regulations. the ps3 had been blackballed by valve until not long ago ( they rekindled with portal2).

          you couldn't be more wrong about shooters/fps being a console genre. the history,tradition, community or plain superior controls aside there are console shooters like halo, former pc shooters that made the transition to console shooters like the call of duty series and pc fps like counterstrike/l4d/idshooters etc.

          another reason why valve is considered a pc developer will be their rtsg section they have built up recently.

          • reply
            August 3, 2010 5:07 PM

            I'd find it hard to belive the multi-million L4D units Valve sold on consoles were not their breadwinners for the last two years respectively. I do not know how much real money Vavle generates off Steam, but selling $9.99 PC titles surely isn't that profitable.

            Valve has been a shooter company before they were a 'Steam' company or a 'PC' company. Shooters are a console genre now, not because they're better on consoles, but because console players buy way more shooters than PC players do.

            On the plus side, all those L4D console sales paid for a lot of Team Fortress 2 PC updates over the years. Valve making money off consoles has had some good PC kickbacks,

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          August 3, 2010 8:26 AM

          lol? The only genre consoles have is racing.

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            August 3, 2010 9:26 AM

            I'd say action / fighting games are often best played with a controller. I like to use a wheel for racing most of the time. Unless it's arcade racing, of course.

          • reply
            August 3, 2010 8:49 PM

            they have arcade racing

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          August 3, 2010 9:31 AM

          I'm pretty confident that L4D 1 and 2 have sold more on PC.

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            August 3, 2010 10:16 AM

            I wouldn't be so sure. I don't think they ever announced numbers did they?

        • reply
          August 3, 2010 9:56 AM

          You're about as stunningly misinformed as an acquaintance of mine who thinks there's no difference between North and South Korea. It's all just Korea, right?

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          August 3, 2010 10:08 AM

          Trolling?

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          August 3, 2010 10:32 AM

          Because they make most of their money from PC steam sales. Steam sales of other developer's games though.

        • reply
          August 4, 2010 1:18 AM

          Are you a troll or a retard?

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        August 3, 2010 7:45 AM

        I don't understand how you can like Blizzard, battle.net is crap, the game has region restriction for god knows what reasons, I can't buy it on steam and it's overpriced everywhere else (Australia) and they even had the notion of trying to make people use their real names, which was an embarrassment.

        The game might be good, but everything else surrounding Blizzard makes me wonder what people see in the company...

        Please explain.

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          August 3, 2010 7:50 AM

          People really like their games. Unless Blizzard starts raping children I'm pretty sure whatever flaws they have will be overlooked or dealt with.

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          August 3, 2010 7:53 AM

          i may be in the minority, but all of those negatives you mentioned mean absolutely nothing to me. that might have something to do with it.
          more importanly, blizzard makes extremely polished, gorgeous, additively fun games... for the PC. the decrepit, dying PC. they're like "yeah, we could make console games where all the supposed 'big money' is, but why bother when we're literally THE pc gaming market?". not many gaming companies have the power to do that and at the very least they deserve some respect.

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            August 3, 2010 7:56 AM

            PC gaming is not and was never dying.

            • reply
              August 3, 2010 8:17 AM

              [deleted]

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              August 3, 2010 12:45 PM

              kind of my point. i should have put those words in quotes. but to make another point, it's certainly not what it once was. i think blizzard is doing a fine job at setting the example of how to do pc gaming right.

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            August 3, 2010 7:59 AM

            People who say PC gaming is dying cant deal with change

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        August 3, 2010 8:07 AM

        I Guess that companies like Relic, Infinity Ward , 4a Games, taleworlds.com, Ubisoft Montreal, Bizarre Creations, Raven, 2K Games, Black Rock Studio, BioWare, NCSoft have been releasing Plants vs. Zombies clones for Xbox live right?

        I don't know why people keep saying the false statement that only Blizzard and Valve develop PC games now days. Funny thing is that we're having more and more prime releases on the PC. We're seeing less Xbox 360 or PS3 exclusives and more multiplatform releases. In fact many X360 and PS3 exclusive games are releasing PC versions cause some publishers don't consider the PC platform a direct competitor.

        I'm not telling that PC Platform is the most profitable platform (it is not) or that multiplatform games play better on PC (which many don't) but in 2010 I'm seeing better and more PC Games that in past year. And if you take in account causal gaming (yes I'm talking to you Peggle freaks) you'll see that PC gaming is far from dead.

        • reply
          August 3, 2010 9:16 AM

          Take your logic and your sensible statements back to your cave. They have no place here on the Internet.

          • reply
            August 3, 2010 9:55 AM

            lol...yeah I keep forgetting that :D

      • reply
        August 3, 2010 2:45 PM

        Wrong! There are a ton of quality PC games if you open your eyes. Oh and this looks pretty kewl to, Medieval Sims

        http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/64983

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      August 3, 2010 11:42 AM

      [deleted]

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        August 3, 2010 4:42 PM


        This year some of the best PC exclusives, Starcraft 2, which has obviously done amazing for an RTS Civilization V and Cataclysm. All of which are have enough content in them to be played for years.

        It seems it doesn't matter how good the PC is doing, because there are people here to just shit on it.

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