Analyst Predicts 7 Million Copies of StarCraft 2 Sold Before End of Year

With just days to go before its release, analysts are predicting big things in StarCraft 2’s future.

Let’s be honest here: No one thinks that StarCraft 2 is going to tank when it’s released on Tuesday, so the real question is just how well is it going to sell. Analyst Mike Hickey of Janco Partners thinks he knows, and believes that the game could sell as many as 7 million units before the end of Activision Blizzard’s fiscal year in December.

Writing in a research note on Friday, Hickey made his predictions about unit sales and said that he thought the game would make just over $170 million dollars in profit for Activision Blizzard, assuming a 45% operating margin. Hickey also said that his predictions may turn out to be conservative, as he said that it was entirely possible that he had underestimated how South Korea would affect sales figures. “Blizzard Entertainment Korea was rumored at a recent media event to comment that players in Korea have approached 11 million suggesting an opportunity for performance in excess of our estimates,” he said.

Seven million copies is impressive enough by itself, but it becomes even more significant when you consider that StarCraft 2 is only coming out on PC and Mac, and not getting a console release.

Source: Gamasutra