Can the Starcraft 2 Franchise succeed financially?

[spychi]

I just want to make it clear and my statement is just "IN CASE". If we will have something like an Xbox live accounts: gold, silver, DLC content for money, etc etc, one thing is for sure I will quit from any Blizzard related game and from the community, I don't want to pay a monthly fee just to be able to play any Blizzard game.
The monthly fee was the reason why after the trail version of WoW I quited.
I was not able to pay 120PLN every second month, even that the game is cool - also I didn't want to crack it, for obvious reasons.

I want Battle.net 2.0 with all it's features to be free, even that this could be hard for me in the future.

I am positive that they will not do the same thing with BN as Micro$oft did with Xbox Live, but just in case I wanted to make this clear.

[sandwich_bird]

I will fully expect you to eat your words and grovel appropriately when the new WoW expansion is announced at BlizzCon.

SC2 will sell millions, but it won't sell as much as WoW. Maybe they'll do what they should have done instead of WoW and make an MMO based on StarCraft...? Who knows.

They won't announce the new wow expansion till they make the final wotlk dungeon.

[SaharaDrac]

WoW is not the be-all end-all of video games sales. It wasn't even Activision/Blizzard's biggest seller last year. SC2 can be bigger.

[Kimera757]

Maybe they'll do what they should have done instead of WoW and make an MMO based on StarCraft...? Who knows.

It may be financially a good idea, but I don't see how a StarCraft MMO wouldn't butcher the lore the way WoW did.

[DemolitionSquid]

Please don't mention SCMMO. Its entirely do-able, and can be done within lore. Its just not ethical on any level to create such a thing.

[Norfindel]

No doubt a huge amount of people is going to buy it. The game is a damn leyend. If they made the first campaign right, i bet most people will want to buy the others to continue the history. For the people not interested in the history, i don't see a lot of incentive into buying the expansions, unless the MP changes are very good. But probably the hard MP group is also interested in the history, anyways.

[Nicol Bolas]

i don't see a lot of incentive into buying the expansions, unless the MP changes are very good.

Since Blizzard will be looking to run the tournaments, they're going to force serious multiplayer people to get them regardless. Just as they force you to use the most up-to-date version of the patch when you log on to Battle.Net.

Notice that there are no tournaments for vanilla StarCraft.

Oh, you'll be able to play with just the vanilla version, even in multiplayer. But the vast majority of even semi-serious multiplayers will have the expansions.

[Norfindel]

By the third game you have to realize the engine isn't going to be as cool. (You realize the engine isn't top of the line right now) The third expansion will be released somewhere around 2012-2013. How's the technology going to look then compared to up and coming RTS that are just being developed now. Is the story hook and killer gameplay going to keep all of the customers? No, people will move away to newer and "hotter" games.

You mean, like how WC3 completely taken over SC players, to become the most played online RTS of all time? Oh... wait a second... that hasn't ever happened

[SaharaDrac]

i don't see a lot of incentive into buying the expansions, unless the MP changes are very good.

You DON'T see a lot of incentive into buying expansions...

so let me get this straight: 30 missions (three times the standard) with an entirely different campaign style from the previous, continuing a NINETY-MISSION storyline total in one of the most beloved video game universes there is, and two new multiplayer units for every single race with each expansion...and that's not incentive to buy an expansion pack?

What exactly is incentive for you then? Do you understand that these expansion packs each offer more than any ex-packs from any other company has ever offered, even just considering the MP, and you'll be guaranteed to get two of them? Do you realize that this is exactly what Brood War offered for Mutiplayer? 2 new units for each race? Except that there's going to be 2 expansions instead of one? Did you enjoy Brood War? Was it worth your money?

[Xyvik]

Do you understand that these expansion packs each offer more than any ex-packs from any other company has ever offered, even just considering the MP, and you'll be guaranteed to get two of them? ?

Sorry SaharaDrac, I usually agree with you, but this statement is blatantly incorrect. Age3's x-paks contain nearly three hundred times the amount of content that the SC2 x-paks will contain. 2 new units per race per x-pak? That's only 12 new units. Heck, DoW had more content in its x-paks than SC2 will have.

The quality of blizzard's work is undeniable, but don't go pretending that they're giving us a huge amount of bang for our buck. That's simply self-delusional. After all, the whole reason we're waiting so long is because of Bnet2, which is purely MP-based. MP-wise these x-paks have very little to offer that hasn't been done before, or better. SP-wise, undeniable quality and content, but still. These x-paks are not roaring good value.

That doesn't mean I won't be buying them, because as mentioned, if you're serious at all about playing even near the pro level you won't do so with Vanilla, but the x-paks are still not a very large amount of content, especially when compared with other large names in the industry.