What you need to know
- Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard in October 2023. Since then, the rollout for Activision Blizzard games on Xbox Game Pass has been slow, with games like Diablo 4 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 being added to the service.
- During the Xbox Tokyo Game Show 2024 presentation, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer confirmed that StarCraft Remastered and StarCraft 2 are coming to PC Game Pass.
- StarCraft Remastered and StarCraft 2 are joining the PC Game Pass lineup on Nov. 5, 2024.
Players can return to the Koprulu Sector and the world of rock-paper-scissors strategy soon.
During the Xbox Tokyo Game Show 2024 presentation, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer revealed that StarCraft Remastered and StarCraft 2 are coming to PC Game Pass and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate on Nov. 5, 2024. The StarCraft franchise follows the struggles of three wildly different factions, the human Terrans, the ever-hungry Zerg, and the hyper-advanced Protoss.
While StarCraft 2’s multiplayer is free-to-play, this Game Pass launch includes the campaign collection, meaning players can experience the entire science-fiction story.
Microsoft finalized its acquisition of Activision Blizzard back in October 2023, with a handful of the company’s games added to the Xbox Game Pass lineup in the following months, including Blizzard Entertainment’s Diablo 4 and Activision’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.
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StarCraft is an iconic piece of Blizzard history
Despite the lack of a new game in recent years, StarCraft is a huge part of developer Blizzard Entertainment’s history, and one of the defining franchises in the RTS genre.
As a sequel to one of the most iconic real-time strategy (RTS) games, StarCraft 2 was split across three different launches, with the 2010 Wings of Liberty release focusing on the Terran campaign, 2013’s Heart of the Swarm unleashing the Zerg, and 2015’s Legacy of the Void concluding the story with the Protoss arc. Meanwhile, StarCraft Remastered is the original game, cleaned up with support for more modern graphics capabilities, first launching back in 2017.
The first game and its Brood War expansion sold over 11 million copies by 2009, while StarCraft 2’s three different campaign releases each sold over a million copies in under 48 hours. The franchise crossed $1 billion in revenue back in 2017.
Right now, it’s not clear what the future holds for StarCraft, but with more players getting to play these two games, we’ll see if there’s more to come in the years ahead.
