The Blizzard deal can bring more than $1 Billion in Revenues.
The deal included Starcraft, which is projected to outsell Warcraft by
70% (projected by simexchange.com).
Warcraft accounts for majority of The9 revenues of about $250 Million
a year projected
Starcraft II deal is 3+1 Years = even if it generates around $250
Million a year with Warcraft included (which is also part of deal)
and counting growing Chinese user base. That should add more than $1
Billion in revenues to NTES. If you add Warcraft rights to NTES as
well, that is significantly more, Do I have my math wrong or does the
market has its math wrong? I am not even counting all the new users
that the game will bring to NTES other chinese games.

world of warcraft is a mmorpg - subscription based. Starcraft is a
real time strategy, i do not think you need a paid subscription to
play this

As stated above, World of Warcraft is pay per month ($15 every month),
Starcraft II and Diablo III are pay one time, about 50$ and thats it.
Blizzard is gonna be making all the money, buy Vivendi stock. NTES is
just gonna help them advertise

NTES probably would lose money from this deal. This deal is just for
the future better relationship with Blizzard.

For battle.net, there is no way to sell the license key at $50 in
China, maybe 30-50 RMB. Plus, most users would not buy that softwares
for sure...

You should do your homework The business model is pay-to-play and will
make lots of money for Netease (NTES) and Activision). There is no way
this is for a better relationship with Blizzard only.A very similar
game in same genre, Warcraft is making $60 million a quarter and
growing rapidly, you are telling me they are just going to overlook
that? You are right no one buys software in China, but everyone
willing to pay to play those games online. Same type of terms between
THQ (USA) and Shanda (China).

You can't compare Starcraft 2 with WOW. They are 2 totally different
kinds of games.

Did you hear about "Si Fu"? hehe. As you said, if ppl don't want to
buy softwares, then why do they want to pay that service if Si Fu is
available everywhere?

Anyway, this deal is good, but no profit for sure. (I guess NTES may
lose a little money).

Its time to back up the truck...

出售正版游戏是战网的重要盈利手段，但据有关人士估算，暴雪旗下《星际争霸》、《魔兽争霸》等游戏在中国虽然至少有50-60万活跃用户，但他们几乎全
部是盗版用户。即便是即将发布的《星际争霸2》，也可能在发布一周内出现盗版，因此如何防止盗版将成为战网盈利的重要环节。

　　此外，如何应对“盗版战网”也将是一个棘手的问题，只要那些免费的第三方平台存在，战网的收费就不能随性所欲，盗版就很难被禁制。对于中国目前存在
的第三方平台，甚至暴雪自己的态度就很不明朗，记者曾于2008年3月就此采访了暴雪公司执行副总裁Frank Pearce以及当时的大中华区总经理
Michael Fong，他们一方面暴雪公司认为这些平台都属于“私服”，另一方面暴雪公司并没有明确表示如何解决。

http://games.sina.com.cn/y/n/2008-08-13/1714263833.shtml