News - Starcraft II rockets to number spot

[HEXUS]

PC exclusive goes straight into top spot in the UK video games chart.

Read more.

[Hicks12]

And now i laugh at the reporters that say pc gaming is dead.... it just requires time and effort to release a good game, not some cheapy ports.

Well done blizzard, i shall be getting sc2 soon haha

[spoon_]

What surprised me is that on various warez websites people were talking about buying the game rather that using dodgy download... And that's in thread providing "free" copy of SC2.

Everyone almost said that you gotta appreciate the effort Blizzard put into this and any other game they've released so far. You just have to admire their passion.

Bottom line is - go and get yourself a copy rather than download it.

Another thing - game came out at midnight and at 8AM next day cracked version was already available... IF PC gaming if deffo because of those idiots queueing to get a copy and crack so millions can play for free.

Battle.NET is something that makes the difference between legal and not legal copy.

[aidanjt]

The number one spot in the U.K. video game charts is often reserved for multi-platform games

That's because there's rarely a decent title release that is purely for PC these days.

[kalniel]

That's because there's rarely a decent title release that is purely for PC these days.

No, it's because 60 million is a bigger number than 10 million. Any game that sells to multiple markets is going to have a much larger potential customer pool than one selling to just a subsection of that pool.

[directhex]

And now i laugh at the reporters that say pc gaming is dead.... it just requires time and effort to release a good game, not some cheapy ports.

Wii game sales in 2009: 179 million

DS game sales in 2009: 142 million

Xbox 360 game sales in 2009: 113 million

PS3 game sales in 2009: 92 million

PC games sales in 2009: 40 million

PSP game sales in 2009: 36 million

Any idea what it costs to make a game these days? When the market's that small, unless you're confident that you can sell around the 10 million mark (which Starcraft 1 exceeded), then the PC is a high-cost, low-return (aka dying) platform for exclusive big-budget games. And 10 million is the minimum you need to sell a big-budget game these days (e.g. Bioware have stated it's their minimum for a game like Mass Effect 2 or Dragon Age to be profitable)

[GheeTsar]

According to the PC gaming alliance, sales of PC games totalled $13.1 billion last year. Conservatively estimating that each game sold for $50 each (probably much lower really), this would mean 262 million PC games were sold in 2009.

[directhex]

According to the PC gaming alliance, sales of PC games totalled $13.1 billion last year. Conservatively estimating that each game sold for $50 each (probably much lower really), this would mean 262 million PC games were sold in 2009.

There's more to profit than game sales, these days. Especially in the era of selling games to housewives. Gamepolitics rephrased it to make it sound like $13bn of game sales - it was $13bn of pc gaming revenue, which includes millions of MMO players and their monthly fees, and the 40 million Farmville players paying microtransactions to Zynga. 11.5 million WoW players, paying $13 a month, makes $1.8bn of revenue for one game. A big-name one, sure, but there should be more to PC gaming than one game from 2004 making up 10% of all revenue.

[kmufc77]

Ive had this game since release date and have not even installed it yet!

Ive been too busy resubing to Age Of Conan which has greatly improved.

I must install and play SC2 the weekend as im sure im missing out on a classic game if Blizzard have anything to do with it.

[live2give]

loving it so far, altohugh after ten years i think it was a bit of am amti climax

[EnderDace]

Has Starcraft 2 been cracked already? I mean multiplayer, I assume single player would be easier but multiplayer is limited to Battle.net unless they've cracked that as well.

It's a pity because Blizzard deserve their money, it might have taken them ten years, but it was worth the wait.

The graphics are nothing cutting edge, but they're nice, well put together and scale brilliantly - which is lucky for me since I'm barely scraping by running it on my old broken laptop.
What makes the single player game is the level design; it's brilliantly paced, the levels always keep moving, keep the pressure on you, but don't rush you, at least on the easier settings. (I'm finding micro a bit difficult on this machine since it skips so much)
I can't describe any of the levels in detail, spoilers would ruin much of the fun, but anyone who liked the original should love this.