StarCraft II Becomes Best-Selling Strategy Game of All Time

StarCraft II might be causing grief for some gamers, with overheating graphics cards, but that has done little to throttle the initial success of the game, with over 1,000,000 copies sold on launch day. As Blizzard notes in its press release, the game sold 1 million in the first 24 hours, and then 1.5 million by the end of the first 48 hours. Thanks to this, StarCraft II has become the fastest-selling strategy game of all time.

The press release doesn’t make mention of how many of these copies were sold in the US, or other regions, but part of the success can thank the game’s global reach, with it being available in 11 languages and sold on 5 different continents. Personally, I’d be very interested to see how many of these copies were sold in South Korea, given the original title’s incredible success there.

As impressive as the 1.5 million in 48 hours figure is though, the game didn’t manage to overcome some of the much higher records set by other games, such as Grand Theft Auto IV, which sold 3.6 million copies in its first day alone. But when you consider that StarCraft II was launched only for the PC, and GTA IV for multiple platforms, the accomplishment is even more impressive.

For interest’s sake, according to Wikipedia the best-selling PC game of all time is the original The Sims game, which shipped over 16 million copies. In second-place, believe it or not, is The Sims 2, with 12 million games sold (that number doesn’t even include the expansion packs, which sold 6.6 million on the side). In third is Blizzard’s own World of Warcraft, which has sold “at least” 11.5 million copies to date, but the real number is likely to be much more.

IRVINE, Calif – August 3, 2010 – Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today announced that StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty achieved a day-one sales milestone of more than 1 million copies sold worldwide, making it the bestselling PC game of 2010 within its first 24 hours of availability. The game went on to sell a total of more than 1.5 million copies in its first 48 hours, setting the record for fastest-selling strategy game of all time.