StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty release date announced

Activision and Blizzard have formally announced the release date for the first game in the new StarCraft 2 trilogy, Wings of Liberty.

StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty will be released in stores on July 27th for PC and Mac. A digital release will be available exclusively from Blizzard's online store some point later on - the exact date for the digital release hasn't been narrowed down, it seems.

Wings of Liberty contains just the Terran singleplayer campaign, plus multiplayer for all races. Two more StarCraft 2 releases are planned that will contain the singleplayer campaigns for the other races, the Zerg and Protoss.

Blizzard has promised that the decision to divide StarCraft 2 is one that's natural for the series and that the developer is not 'milking' StarCraft 2 by cutting it up into three releases.

Blizzard also recently announced that StarCraft 2 will include a mod marketplace, but will lack LAN support.

"We've been looking forward to revisiting the StarCraft universe for many years, and we're excited that the time for that is almost here," said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. "Thanks to our beta testers, we're making great progress on the final stages of development, and we'll be ready to welcome players all over the world to StarCraft II and the new Battle.net in just a few months."

You can read our own thoughts on the StarCraft 2 beta for more information on the game, then let us know your thoughts in the forums.