Has StarCraft II Become the Most Expensive Game Ever Developed?

With the rip-roaring success (understatement) of the original StarCraft game, Blizzard wasn’t about to walk into the development room for the sequel and not pony up some cold hard cash to make sure that it gets the best ratings possible and sells like there’s no tomorrow. Well, it sure accomplished one of those goals so far, and we’ll see if the latter happens after the game launches later this month.

According to a new report, Blizzard has spent over $100 million on the development of StarCraft II, which according to a recent top 10 list, would make StarCraft II the most expensive game ever made, with Grand Theft Auto IV falling right behind it. In the case of that game, it sold in unbelievable numbers, and generated $500 million worth of sales in the first week alone.

One thing that GTA has going for it, though, is controversy, and lots of it. I truly believe that, that alone is one of the reasons it sold so well, because people eat controversy up. It’s always been that way. With loose lawyers bringing the game to everyone’s attention, who wouldn’t want to pick it up out of spite, or just to see what all the fuss is about?

StarCraft has none of that of course, but it does have a very large fanbase. But whether or not the countless number of people who still play StarCraft 1 will be quick to jump on the sequel is yet to be seen. It’s also very difficult to predict, but I do see it doing we very well overall. If I had to guess, it might not reach GTA numbers, because those are going to be very, very difficult to beat. We’ll see soon enough.

On the surface investing so much into a PC title seems like an odd move – for Activision and most other publishers, console-based retail games have been the cash cow – but this attention-shift is a new trend in the industry as momentum slows. As explained in the Wall Street Journal (subscription link), US game software sales were more than 6% lower in the first five months of 2010, when compared to the same period in 2009 according to NPD. It’s also reported that last year’s June sales were $2.3 billion, significantly higher than this year’s $2.2.