Do you know how much sales figures would be affected if a game hit it's marginal audience and not its "hardcore fanboy's"?
To paraphrase Douglas Addams in THGTTG "Not at all".
Unless, of course, your game is selling on the basis of its online Multiplayer. I would wager that this is NOT the case with Homeworld 2. I predict that either Alex got his pinkslip recently (or is expecting it) because of merger or that you'll see a large dose of ignorage over this.
Eon