We are now three days away from the StarCraft 2 launch and there is an air of excitement within the industry to see how well it performs. Industry Analyst Mike Hickey of Janco Partners has stated that he’s expecting the game to sell a whopping seven million units in this fiscal year generating around 0 million in sales for Activision Blizzard. Hickey says this will generate an “estimated 1 million in operating profit (assuming a 45% operating margin).” HIckey also states that around 70% of that will be generated in the third quarter of this year.
The Korean market is huge for Blizzard, and according to Hickey, Janco Partners are assuming that StarCraft 2 will create 5.45 million active users in Korea alone in the first year. They also think that 30% of these users will come from the Cyber Bang game rooms, although they have no solid figures to confirm this. If 30% of the active users do play from the game rooms, they have worked out that “Blizzard can net .13 per hour from Cyber Bang game play”.
Breaking the figures down by region, Hicky predicts that Blizzard can generate 5 million in sales from Korea through their fiscal ’10 and an additional 2.5 million units in Europe and the US. 50% of these sales are expected to come from digital distribution.
These figures are only estimates, there is a high possibility these figures could be greater but we’ll have to wait and see.
Thanks IncGamers and IndustryGamers.
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