SC2 does seem to be at its twilight in Korea, and I agree progamers and fans there are super interested in Remastered.

But I don't think Remastered will be very popular outside KR. The SC2 "war chest" promo appears to have made more money than expected, as measured by hitting its funding ceiling within a few days.

So I don't think it's "Remastered replaces SC2", I think it's a divergence into KR playing Remastered and non-KR playing SC2, and the number of progamers and players doesn't have to be zero-sum: it could enlarge the population playing either game, too.

But I disagree that Blizzard has faith in Starcraft 2 for America or any other country.

The removal of Starcraft 2 from Starcraft's English-Speaking homepage is one sign of finality. In-universe, Blizzard has also ended the main dramatic arc of Starcraft 2's story, leaving room only for half-hearted spin-offs.

Numbers-wise, we're seeing 50% drop-offs in user activity the last 2 years alone. Even with the release of "Legacy of the Void", the number of daily games played for 1v1 since 2015 have gone from 321,000 to 138,000. The new, much-advertised, much-worked-upon, Archon Mode has gone from 11,000 games a day to a measly 1,000 [1]. Not just because of Korean disinterest, we're seeing players leave across the board in all countries.

In 6 years, Starcraft 2 went from millions of players concurrently to an average of 20k a day.

Compare with the lifespans of League-of-Legends, Dota, Counterstrike, even the original Broodwar, and the reason for remastered becomes more obvious.

Blizzard knows Starcraft 2 won't lead to the resurgence of the RTS genre, so they're trying another route.

[1] http://www.rankedftw.com/stats/population/1v1/#v=2&r=-2&sy=c...

I think, given the matchmaking update for remastered, that SC1 will see a resurgence both inside and outside of KR, but I am not sure either SC1 or SC2 will stay competitive in the long run.

The reason I say BW would be especially interesting is simply because the game has remained basically unchanged balance-wise since v1.08 which came out in 2001. Despite that, the pro scene never left, and we're still seeing some shifts in the meta even today. It would be cool to see a strong AI flip the script completely for such an established and "well understood" game. Opportunities like that are kind of rare, at least when it comes to video games.

Couldn't it be the opposite? Blizzard was willing to do this release exactly because SC2 is dead?

Unless I'm mistaken, even the top SC2 streamers today receive a fraction of what other streamers who stream games like Hearthstone or Dota2 get. I'm not suggesting it's a 'ded gaem' but to me it's become a little like AoE2 in that it's a niche e-sport, which is certainly nothing to be ashamed about. But I think it's a far from what Blizzard had hoped for, which I think is reflected with their next batch of games in Hearthstone, Overwatch, and HotS, which all have some level of competitive play while still being way more very friendly to casual users than SC2.

Using SC2 as a starting point isn't really of much consequence. "Too late"? It's not as if the algorithms developed will die alongside the game.