Blizzard proudly announced earlier today that its sales for StarCraft II had reached 1 million units worldwide in the first 24 hours and 1.5 million within 48 hours. While these launch figures are certainly very good, some feel that Blizzard could have done even better. Part of the reason, according to Lazard Capital analyst Colin Sebastian, is that we're not seeing the game's full strength just yet.
"While this [launch sales] number is light of some forecasts, we view this as largely a U.S. + Europe number, with the majority of users in Korea still not reflected in the count. In other words, once the game in Korea shifts from 'free trial' to purchases, we expect the overall user base to be closer to the forecasts, and sales figures not as front-end loaded as expected," Sebastian noted. "Based on strength in Korea, we believe that StarCraft can still achieve ~4M users over the first couple of months, and up to 6.5M users during the fiscal year. We still expect SC2 to add about a nickel to EPS in 3Q."
Sebastian also stressed that Blizzard's business model for the game is not uniform across the globe. "We believe it is worth reiterating that the monetization of the game differs by region, with time-cards and other usage-based models deferring a portion of the revenue streams. Moreover, once the game launches in China, and 'game room' competition intensifies, we expect to see a more meaningful contribution from recurring revenues for the title," he said.
