StarCraft II To Contribute 5% Of Rev. To NTES In 2011; 10% In 2012

Goldman Sachs believes that StarCraft II will contribute 5% of total revenue to NetEase.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: NTES) in 2011 and 10% of total revenue in 2012

“Based on our observations from chat room discussions, gamers generally have strong affinity to the StarCraft franchise and Blizzard's (NASDAQ: ATVI) quality assurance,” Goldman Sachs writes. “Positive feedback focused on graphics and interesting Battle.net-enabled competitive ranking systems (which could mitigate play on private servers, which have already started to emerge).

“However, we have also gathered negative feedback, mainly surrounding the choice of a monthly subscription model and connection/hardware requirement issues resulting in game play latency.”

“Riding on the strong StarCraft franchise brand, StarCraft II has sold 4.5mn copies since its July 2010 launch (outside China), compared to around 12mn global subscriptions (noncumulative) for World of Warcraft,” Goldman Sachs continues. “The game's performance has not been consistent across regions, however, such as in Korea, where we attribute the lackluster traction to the dominance of the first StarCraft game and relatively muted marketing programs.”

NetEase.com closed Tuesday at $51.90.