GTA IV sold 3.8 million copies on launch day and it established itself as the best selling video game in history. But then in November 2009 came Modern Warfare 2 and mopped the floor with it, selling an outrageous 4.7 million copies on launch day in USA and UK alone. That’s $310 million dollars in just 24 hours. Hard to beat, don’t you think?
But, if there’s anyone out there who can surpass this achievements, it’s gotta be Blizzard. I’m not trying to flame on Infinity Ward’s game, even though it was a silly remake with almost zero improvements, I’m just aware of the facts:
- Starcraft 2 already has over one million beta players. Not everyone got a key, so it would have had a lot more if it was an open for all beta.
- We only waited Modern Warfare 2 for 2 years. Starcraft 2 comes after 12 years of waiting, so the hype surrounding it has reached critical levels
- The first Starcraft is still being played around the world and it even got to be South Korea’s national sport. It sold 11 million copies world wide since 1998 and the players are eager to get their hands on a shiny new sequel. Actually, there already were Starcraft 2 competitions in the beta version!
- On the 17th of July there was a total of 700,000 preorders in North America alone and over 2 million world wide
All these ingredients indicate that we’re in the the biggest launch in history. The target is 4.8 million copies, but I say it’s going to be least 5 million. Only one more day of waiting and we’ll know the answer.
