Activision Blizzard has stamped StarCraft 2: Wings Of Liberty with a July 27 launch date.
Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime said of the highly anticipated RTS title: "We've been looking forward to revisiting the StarCraft universe for many years, and we're excited that the time for that is almost here. Thanks to our beta testers, we're making great progress on the final stages of development, and we'll be ready to welcome players all over the world to StarCraft II and the new Battle.net in just a few months."
The company is currently appealing the South Korean classification board’s decision to rate StarCraft II Adults Only.
Cowen and Company analyst Doug Creutz said that the game’s launch should resolve “a long-standing overhang” on Activision shares, and that he expects it to sell five million copies in its first year of availability.
The analyst also commented on Activision’s recently unveiled Call Of Duty: Black Ops, noting: “Three days after the debut of the game's first trailer and more than six months away from the game's launch date, Black Ops currently sits at #5 on both the 360 and PS3 Amazon.com best-seller lists.
“Although we estimate a 26 per cent decline in unit sales vs. 2009's Modern Warfare 2, we believe there is potential for upside vs. our estimates, if for no other reason than that we expect the combined 360/PS3 hardware installed base to have grown by roughly 35 per cent year-over-year when Black Ops is launched."