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Analysts: StarCraft II Is Totally Going To Sell A Lot Of Copies

by Phil Kollar on Jul 28, 2010 at 12:20 PM

What would we do without financial analysts to give us their estimates on just how insanely well hot new games are going to sell? In the latest round of shocking analyst predictions, a number of sales gurus are predicting that the just-released StarCraft II is going to be very, very successful.

Coming off a round of previous predictions in February, GameSpot is reporting on the new numbers rolling in. Todd Greenwald of Signal Hill thinks the game will sell over five million copies. In his words: "We think that rough estimates for Starcraft II to sell 5-6 million units this year are highly achievable and will prove to be conservative over the next five months."

Greenwald also noted that he expects StarCraft II sales to have an extremely positive effect on Activision Blizzard's bottom line. Despite a rumored total development cost of $100 million, "the vast majority of SCII's development costs have already been expensed" during the game's four-plus years in development. As an added bonus, it's a PC-only release, meaning Activision is paying no royalties to a console manufacturer, and Greenwald expects it to sell a good chunk of copies digitally, meaning no fee to retailers either.

Meanwhile, Colin Sebastian of Lazard Capital Markets speculates that StarCraft II will sell 4.5 million units by the end of September and 6.5 million by the end of 2010.

So, uh, is there anyone out there who thinks StarCraft II won't do well?