Diablo III stormed out of the gates this past week by selling 3.5 million copies in its first 24 hours. I know we thought the game would do well, but that number seems incredibly huge. And yes, I know the latest Call of Duty game sold something like 6.5 million copies, but console games are much more widespread, which makes this Diablo number all the more impressive. Just imagine all the enemies and loot collected thus far!
The server issues that plagued Diablo III’s first 48 hours or so were certainly unfortunate, but it turns out that Blizzard really did have a good reason for not quite anticipating the server load it endured. After all, who could possibly have predicted that the game would sell 3.5 million copies in its first 24 hours?
That 3.5 million number doesn’t even take into account the 1.2 million who received a copy of the game through the World of Warcraft Annual Pass program. All in all, that means 4.7 million people were at least capable of playing Diablo III on day one.
All in all, 6.3 million copies have been sold/acquired in the week since the game’s launch, which, according to Blizzard, breaks the “all-time record for fastest-selling PC game.” I don’t have my list of the fastest-selling PC games of all time handy, but I’ll just assume that Blizzard did its homework before making that claim. Otherwise, they should be expecting a nasty phone call from somebody over at Guinness. (the record book, not the beer)
Records or no records, Diablo III is unequivocally a massive, overwhelming success, and it’s only been a week.