Blizzard Entertainment said that its StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm expansion sold 1.1 million units in its first two days on sale. At $60 each, that’s $60 million in revenue over a couple of days for both physical and digital sales combined.
“We want to thank the global StarCraft community for the incredible passion and support they’ve shown for Heart of the Swarm,” said CEO Mike Morhaime.
“In addition to a brand-new single-player campaign, we added a ton of enhancements with this expansion to make StarCraft II even more fun to play, and more exciting to watch. We’re pleased to see gamers and e-sports fans around the world enjoying Heart of the Swarm.”
The game also drew more than 1.1 million viewers who saw the 21-hour global broadcast event on Twitch. Concurrent viewership reached over 125,000 people.
Blizzard is a division of Activision Blizzard, which reported a record net revenue of $1.77 billion for the fourth quarter of 2012.
I’m about eight missions into the 20-mission campaign. It’s amusing to me to play the Zerg in a single-player campaign, as I’ve always played the Terrans in the past. But I find the single-player story to be highly implausible, as Sarah Kerrigan somehow is seeking redemption as a human despite being responsible for billions of human deaths.
Still, the heart of the game is multiplayer combat, and that’s where the game is getting strong support. About 1.1 million viewers viewed the Heart of the Swarm tournament last weekend at the Major League Gaming Winter Championship in Dallas. The peak viewership hit 157,000 concurrent spectators.