StarCraft II Cost $100 Million To Develop

UgLyPuNk writes with news of a report that Blizzard has spent over $100 million developing StarCraft II. Initial development on the game began in 2003, and it's due to be released on July 27th. Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick "described StarCraft as one of the company’s seven 'pillars of opportunity' (where each pillar has the potential to deliver operating profit between $500 million and $1 billion over its life span)." The finalized system requirements for the game have been released, and players planning to buy the digitally distributed version can download it now, though it won't be playable until the 27th.

Comments

and still

[phantomfive]

Wow, $100million dollars and STILL couldn't afford to include LAN play. No worries, someone will do it for them free ;)

Re:and still

[Korin43]

Some of the most entertaining LAN parties are in places with little or no internet access. My favorite was a cabin LAN party. The only internet access was via cell phone, and I can't image the charge if I had left it on the entire time.

Re:and still

[nmb3000]

Playing in network environments not hooked up to the Internet much?

Wow, fanboy much?

The simple fact is that there are MANY times and places where LAN support is very helpful, if not outright required. Several other posters have enumerated the latter, but for the former, you need to consider scale.

Sure, if you have 4-6 people playing then maybe going over the Internet to Battle.net is an okay (if lame) solution. What about a group of 20? 50? 200? Blizzard has repeatedly said they want Starcraft II to be a serious e-sport contender, both in Asia and in the US/Europe. During the beta, people trying to organize big LAN-style game sessions have noted that their plans completely fell apart when they discovered that Battle.net limited the number of players per IP address to 12. This might have changed, but the fact that they instituted any limit should be telling.

To pull this off, they will be required to implement some form of LAN play, something they've already said they will do:

"We will be addressing StarCraft II tournament functionality in a post launch patch to the game, soon after ship. This patch will include features to address the needs of location-based pro tournaments, but we have not discussed any specifics about tournament support beyond that."

Blizzard denies the rumors of a LAN-enabled "Professional Edition", but it sure sounds like that's the direction they're heading. On one hand Blizzard claims that "No LAN because Battle.net 2 is just so amazing we can't let anyone miss out!" and then on the other "Okay, LAN play is required but only high rollers get it, not the rest of you, you dirty pirates". Anyone who's played the beta knows how bad and lacking Battle.net 2 is. Yes, it's beta, but the final release is in less than 10 days. It's not like they're going to uncheck the "Battle.net sucks enabled" checkbox the day before.

I want to love Starcraft 2, but Blizzard-Activision is making it so hard :(