StarCraft II sells 3 million in a month

By Robert Purchese Published 1 September, 2010

PC and Mac crowd swarm shops.

Blizzard has announced that pristine PC and Mac game StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty sold three million copies worldwide during its first month on sale.

That accolade adds to those already announced: that SCII is the fastest-selling real-time strategy game ever, and the best-selling PC game so far this year.

To achieve this, Blizzard launched simultaneously in North America, Europe, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines and the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau.

Eurogamer's StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty review delivered our verdict.

Remember: StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is only the first of three StarCraft II games; SCII: Heart of the Swarm and SCII: Legacy of the Void are still to come.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

You may also like...

Comments (30) Latest comment 1 year ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • darkmorgado #1 1 year ago

    PC IS DEAD!

    etc etc

    EDIT: Just in case, this is called irony
    Edited by 1 at 01/09/10 @ 11:46

  • Serai #2 1 year ago

    There are only 3m gaming computers left in the world

  • Bleemo #3 1 year ago

    Considering they were expecting to sell as many as 12 million copies this might actually below their expectation as mad as that clearly is.

  • spekkeh #4 1 year ago

    Good on them, but why is that mental image of a masturbating Kotick nagging me?

  • nofear360 #5 1 year ago

    I'm only about 30% through the campaign and am LOVING it!

  • spekkeh #6 1 year ago

    PC gaming isn't dead. Incidentally, I saw a swallow in June.

    EDIT: just in case, this is irony too
    Edited by 1 at 01/09/10 @ 13:49

  • darkmorgado #7 1 year ago

    @Bleemo it's early days yet, and given that there are different models in different regions (in Asia I think one copy will be used by god knows how many people in cafes and they will pay by the hour, instead of our model of having a single copy tied to a single account), the 3m figure in itself isn't indicative of the number of people playing the game. Active accounts would be a better way of gauging just how popular it is.

  • MiniAmin #8 1 year ago

    Considering they were expecting to sell as many as 12 million copies this might actually below their expectation as mad as that clearly is.

    It probably will sell 12 million copies. I imagine it'll have a much slower, more steady sales pattern when compared to most AAA console titles. I plan to pick this up next year at some point.

  • tincanrocket #9 1 year ago

    Good on them, but why is that mental image of a masturbating Kotick nagging me?

    Stop using chatroulette?

  • InfiniteFury #10 1 year ago

    Does this include the digital downloads?

  • Mechorpheus #11 1 year ago

    Just hurry up and release Heart of the Swarm already!

  • darkmorgado #12 1 year ago

    @EarlBasset

    Case Zero has been reviewed elsewhere.

    In short - around 6 hours of gameplay, very few combination weapons in it, same strict mission timeline as the original, you can lock the game into an unwinnable state unless you fulfil conditions that the game never explains, autosaving is a joke and your level is capped early on, but still great fun, truckloads of zombies onscreen and you can carry your stats over into DR2. Apparently as well it's NOT indicative of DR2, so presumably the flaws in this don't exist in the parent game.

    Oh, and at only 400msp it would be rude not to buy it.
    Edited by 1 at 01/09/10 @ 12:09

  • darkmorgado #13 1 year ago

    @EarlBasset

    The unwinnable state thing apparently has something to do with not getting a bike part from some bikers who only appear after you visit the safehouse a certain number of times and then go up on a roof. Or something. The review I read weren't sure because, as I mentioned, the game never actually explains it to you. I'm going to pick it up this evening after work, should kill some time before Metroid arrives in the post tomorrow.

    EDIT: Hurrah! My copy of Metroid arrived in the post today! God bless Shopto, breaking release dates since forever!
    Edited by 1 at 01/09/10 @ 13:40

  • Rack #14 1 year ago

    The PC is very much alive, originality however is looking a bit ripe.

  • sneetch #15 1 year ago

    I don't think Blizzard do originality anymore. Thankfully they still do high quality, very enjoyable and compulsive. ;)

    This is the first RTS in ages where I could be arsed finishing the campaign.

  • space_ace #16 1 year ago

    ^ I don't think Blizzard do originality.

    fixed. agree about the quality though, of course

  • knightmt #17 1 year ago

    Loved the animations.

  • Flooq #18 1 year ago

    @designerheadache: Why would there be differences? Performance isn't quite the same on OS X (probably because of driver issues) but that's all.

  • Keivz #19 1 year ago

    Must have been in the first couple of weeks seeing as it's been out of the UK top 20 for at least the last two. Impressive nonetheless.

  • sneetch #20 1 year ago

    @designerheadache
    Is this any good on the Mac version?

    All the reviews are PC based and i havent seen one that points out any differences, and there is bound to be some.

    It's the same game on both, the performance may vary depending on your Mac's hardware (the same as it would on your Windows hardware) but the game is the same.

    Blizzard have always been very good on the whole Mac/PC thing.

  • JediMasterMalik #21 1 year ago

    Deserves it, it's a truly excellent game.

  • darkmorgado #22 1 year ago

    Must have been in the first couple of weeks seeing as it's been out of the UK top 20

    Yeah, because the UK charts are totally reflective of worldwide sales and purchasing habits, aren't they?

  • King_of_Hyrule #23 1 year ago

    @designerheadache I used to play it in windows on my iMac because the performance difference was very noticable, but a couple of weeks ago apple released a graphics update for snow leopard which improved things a lot, and now I mainly play on OSX

  • sarcasmoidosis #24 1 year ago

    While it is a game that has legs and a game that will have almost no second hand sales due to Battle.net, it's still a bit disappointing due to the hype. It was tagged as the savior of PC gaming, that one game that will put all the CoDs, the Halos, the GTAs and the GTs to shame. And it's not.

    Still, 3 million so far out of which most of the money goes back to the publisher and the developer is a hell of a number. Although I'm not a fan of the game, it's an incredibly polished experience.

  • darkmorgado #25 1 year ago

    It was tagged as the savior of PC gaming

    Only by hyped-up nerds and the gaming press. Blizzard never said anything of the sort. And when has any game truly lived up to all of the hype that it received?

  • sarcasmoidosis #26 1 year ago

    "Only by hyped-up nerds and the gaming press"

    Which were listened to by the people that have stock, apparently. And some games live up to their hype. If the hype is not that big :)

  • xenoss #27 1 year ago

    PC --IS-- dead. Just look:

    THIS (SC2) is the best we got? An old school RTS riding on the name and fame of Starcraft and Blizzard? This is the best we got. How is that not "dead"? Except for Valve, and various indies and mod developments, PC is pretty dead in this sense.

    Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the game is bad. I was a big SC fan back in the old days, even. But what I AM saying is, while this game is good, or great to some, it isn't THIS good. It isn't 3 million in a month good.

    Without the Blizzard name and the SC IP, this game would sell nowhere NEAR that much.
    Without the Blizzard name and the SC IP, this game wouldn't be nearly as loved and critically acclaimed, either.

    Instead of saying "This game is old school RTS but that's a great thing, because it is so nicely executed and fun and cinematic", the same people, without Blizzard/SC name, would say "This game has no innovation and in this day and age just doesnt cut it anymore. It would have been relevant 8 years ago".

    Hell, most of the people who got SC2 wouldn't have bought that same game if it wasn't for that IP.

    So yes, PC is dead. Innovation is dead too. We live in a world where World in Conflict dies in obscurity and SC2 sells millions; where most people don't know what's Company of Heroes; where people don't care for Supreme Commander even if they heard about it; where RUSE launches and only a handful will even know, leading to another World in Conflict tragedy. All the while SC2 sells another million.

  • darkmorgado #28 1 year ago

    @xenoss

    You're an idiot.

    The PC gaming is dead argument has been going on for close to 2 decades now. You know what? It's just as strong now as it was then, it's just migrated to mainly download sales which aren't accounted for in charts. Look across the world, and the biggest games are almost always PC based. On a global basis, the revenue generated by PC gaming (not just talking retail purchases but also downloads and sib fees for MMOs) eclipses consoles.

  • Freelancepolice #29 1 year ago

    There's plenty of originality on PC, you just have to look for it. It's there on flash sites, digital distribution services and various other websites. There's some fascinating things coming out of eastern europe and even here in the UK.

  • ircaddicts #30 1 year ago

    So the actual number is closer to 300k since all blizzard sales and sub figures have an extra 0 added to them by default