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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.
The Hollywood Accounting here is that they add all the previous developments into the total, since they use parts of the previous sources.
So, they add the prices of Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo 2, and I'm probably missing some others...
Frankly, this is one of the poorest PR I ever read.
If I would have managed a game which cost 100 millions, it would mean that I'm a very bad manager, and I doubt I'll ever find another job.
As an ex-game programmer, I know how much game companies like to announce that their game cost a fortune, but these are lies.
And now, I'm prepared to hear that they'll spend 1 billion on their next game.
Jesus Jobs Christ, get over it, will you? It's not 1992, we're not hucking floppies with Doom Shareware on them around the room. There's not enough market for LAN gaming to make it worthwhile for Blizzard to support it. Prove them wrong: don't buy it, and watch them take a huge loss. But until then, can you please, please, crank the whining down. You're at about a 7, we need you at about a 4.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.