heart-of-the-swarm posts

During Activision Blizzard's financial conference call today, Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime states that sales of its sci-fi RTS game StarCraft II are approaching 4.5 million units since its release back in July. While that's huge for a PC exclusive game that's actually less than some people though it would sell. Several months ago Janco Partners analyst Mike Hickey predicted the game would sell as much as 7 million copies by the end of Activision Blizzard current fiscal year which ends on March 31.

Part of the reason for the lower numbers may be that the game has yet to launch in China. During the conference call Morhaime stated that Blizzard was working with its partner Netease to launch StarCraft II in that country but so far there's no word on a China release date. Meanwhile the game's players have uploaded over 150,000 user-made maps to Battle.net. Morhaime stated that work continues on the next game, StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm, but offered no other details.

While the first StarCraft II game is (hopefully) just a few months away from release, some gamers are wondering what progress has been made on the second game in the planned trilogy of titles for Blizzard's sci-fi RTS sequel. As some of you may know the first game focuses mostly on the Terran side in the single player campaign (Wings of Liberty) while the planned second game will center on the Zerg faction (Heart of the Swarm).

VG247.com spoke with Blizzard VP Chris Metzen on the matter. He stated that while lots of work has gone into the storyline for Heart of the Swarm there's not been much progress on actual mission design yet. He says, " . . most of the designers are still cranking away to get Wings of Liberty out." He did say that Heart of the Swarm will give human/Zerg hybrid character Sarah Kerrigan a major role to play. He states, "She's kind of the heart of the whole thing, pardon the pun. She's the conceptual anchor or the lens through which we see the Zerg worlds and the Zerg mindset."