Xbox announced during its Tokyo Game Show livestream that StarCraft Remastered and StraftCraft 2: Campaign Collection are coming to PC Game Pass later this year on November 5.
Blizzard's sci-fi real-time strategy games are the latest from the company to launch into Game Pass following Microsoft's $69 billion aquisition of Activision Blizzard last year.
"In this genre-defining sci-fi series, players engage in an epic war across the stars in the 25th century" Blizzard‘s Amelia Savery said on the Xbox Wire blog.
"Featuring three different factions—the human Terrans, bug-like Zerg, and the technologically advanced Protoss – the games set each species against each other for the fate of the Koprulu sector."
While the entirety of the original StarCraft and StarCraft 2’s multiplayer components are free-to-play, StarCraft: Remastered and StarCraft 2: Campaign Collection will be available to anyone with a PC Game Pass or Game Pass Ultimate subscription from November 5.
This is in liue of Microsoft buying out Activision Blizzard King, granting it access to a rich history of beloved games from the more modern Overwatch to MMO icon World of Warcraft to the '90s classic StarCraft.
The StarCraft games are iconic for their impact on the RTS genre - the series began in 1998 and has become hugely successful. 2017's StarCraft: Remastered is a remastered edition of Blizzard's 1998 RTS classic StarCraft and its expansion Brood War. It retains the gameplay of the original StarCraft, but features ultra-high-definition graphics (ultra HD), re-recorded audio, and Blizzard's modern online features.
StarCraft 2: Campaign Collection, meanwhile, includes all of StarCraft 2's single-player campaigns with a combined total of over 70 missions from Wings of Liberty, Heart of the Swarm, Legacy of the Void, and Nova Covert Ops.
While these games are being made available for Game Pass users, there's no word on console ports. But in the comments and quote retweets of the announcement over on Twitter, you'll find a slew of fans asking Microsoft to finally bring StarCraft to Xbox, giving the series a new lease on life.
Making an RTS game feel natural with a controller might be tricky, but it has been done before, and it would certainly pave the way for the long-overdue StarCraft 3. Regardless of whether it happens, if you've never tried StarCraft but are already subbed to Xbox Game Pass, now you can finally give it a go.