Blizzard spends a not-small fortune developing sequel to popular sci-fi RTS, says Wall Street Journal.

The original Starcraft was released some 12 years ago and has become one of the most popular PC titles ever, selling over 11 million units to date. The first entry in the game's sequel, following years of fan anticipation, arrives in two weeks bearing an unprecedented budget.

The $100 million man.

According to the Wall Street Journal (subscription required), Activision Blizzard has spent over $100 million on the three-part sequel to the science-fiction real-time strategy game, which kicks off with Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty on July 27.

The report stated the $100 million was purely development price and made no mention of marketing expenditures. That lofty figure well exceeds Gran Turismo 5's $60 million development cost, one of the most expensive video games to date.

Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick has previously labeled the Starcraft franchise as one of the company's seven "pillars of opportunity." Kotick said each pillar has the potential to reap between $500 million and $1 billion of operating profit for the publisher throughout its life. The other pillars are Call of Duty, Guitar Hero, World of Warcraft, Diablo, new Blizzard MMOG, and Bungie's new intellectual property.

Kotick wasn't the only Activision Blizzard executive speaking about the game though. Blizzard president Mike Morhaime told the paper that the publisher should be able to migrate some of its World of Warcraft subscribers to Starcraft II.

"We've brought in a lot of new players in the beta testing who've been playing World of Warcraft but have never tried Starcraft," Morhaime said.

GT5 is one of the most expensive ones? O_o i didn't know that.

Wasn't GT5's budget as of the moment that was announceD?  I.e. it is substantially more now?

For all the delays, I sure as hell hope the budget went up since the $60 mil was announced

100 mil USD for THREE games.

Starcraft II Wing of Liberty is standalone game. Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void are supposed to be datadiscs, with own story, new units, possibly new mechanics, new functions to the battlenet and loads of other shit. Anyone that have every played Blizzard game knows that their datadiscs are gamechanging, not like the rest of the industry. Starcraft and Starcraft Broodwar were very different experiences, same for W3 and W3 FT.

So it's more like 5X mil for SCII WoL, 2X 2X for HotS and LotV.

no the GT5 $60m was announced at the end of last year

So another year's worth of costs are not included?  And presumably, neither is it's promotional budget?

lol the GT5: Prologue sales most likely paid the whole GT5 development cost, and more.

Duplicate thread:

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=113118&page=1#

Go ahead and lock this.