Diablo III Sells 3.5 Million Copies In its First Day Alone

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? I mean, I'm sure we all thought it would do well, but that number is something else entirely.

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. Which is a lot, really.

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 Guinness.

Records or no records, Diablo III is unequivocally a massive, overwhelming success, and it's only been a week. I mean, I haven't even bought my copy yet. That's at least one more coming! Eventually! When I actually have time to play it...

I hear it's pretty good

Diablo 4 coming November 2013

That's a lot of loot!

PC gaming is dead, you guys.

Shocking? Nah.
 
I'm somewhat split on this being a good or a bad thing. It does show that PC gaming is not dead, and games can sell like a motherfucker. But it also gives green light to all publishers that the worst possible DRM is accepted by the public. Or rather, no one cares enough.

Diablo III is so good, it's worth dying for.

weird, it felt like 2 weeks. They broke their own record again, wasn't Starcraft 2 the record holder before? or was it Cataclysm?

thats a lot of always-on internets

Pity the game is a disappointment.

That many copies for a PC game is a game-changer, for better or worse.  
 
If it makes devs/publishers consider making PC exclusives which wouldn't otherwise have been made, then that's great.  If it means games which we'd have been getting anyway will now have always-online DRM shoehorned into them then that's sucky.  If it legitimises a 'release it broken and fix it later' mentality then that would be unfortunate too - nobody should get the free pass Blizzard has been given for that.
 
Bit of a mixed bag.

I'll wait until they're no longer limiting supply to retail and thus forcing people to buy it from their ridiculously overpriced online store.  Sold out everywhere in the UK and I have a feeling that was intentional. If you need an internet connection to play it regardless, I doubt they expected it to cost them many sales and it guaranteed a larger return from people buying it through their own store. 
 
Once the game is around £35 or less I'll hop on, but not before. 

Always-on DRM. So that's a thing.

Fuck this shit

Why don't you have time to play it Mr. Navarro? Are you busy with something exciting and interesting?

Anyone else getting a huge WoW vibe from Diablo 3. Like that it is essentially a simplified, single-player version of WoW?

Those numbers probably don't account for people with a starter edition. While I was waiting for my collector edition to arrive I was able to play with a starter edition that was on my bnet account for some reason.

Yeah, but what's s the highest selling single-platform game for first day copies? Most games that sell that many on day one are multiplatfrom console games.

I wonder how much of those were sold from their website.

5.9 of those million would have pirated it if they could have.

PIRATES!

@phrosnite said:

Pity the game is a disappointment.

A pity for you. I'm having a great time over here.

I need to invest in a new PC.

And yet I could still give no less shit then I already do about it.

that's awesome.

@AlisterCat said:

@phrosnite said:

Pity the game is a disappointment.

A pity for you. I'm having a great time over here.

I pity the fool.

@chiablo said:

Anyone else getting a huge WoW vibe from Diablo 3. Like that it is essentially a simplified, single-player version of WoW?

If anything WoW is a simplified Diablo. Try playing on Hell or Inferno difficulty and see how easy it is.

Wow, those are crazy numbers. I love DII and know many other people that do but this never struck me as a top tier franchise in terms of sales.

All hail ActiBlizzard.

I'm guessing no one even cares about online all the time DRM, or the lack of LAN & offline singleplayer?

That is astounding.

@Dylabaloo said:

I need to invest in a new PC.

i don't care about it either... yet here we both are posting on shit we don't care about. how fucking stupid are we

@Dragon_Fire said:

I'm guessing no one even cares about online all the time DRM, or the lack of LAN & offline singleplayer?

Do people still LAN?

They deserve the high numbers, because they made a well quality product that lived up to the hype. Just had a few hiccups at the starting line.

@Dragon_Fire said:

I'm guessing no one even cares about online all the time DRM, or the lack of LAN & offline singleplayer?

It's annoying, but you can't fight City Hall.

At least not until you're level 50 or better.

No thank you.

@Dragon_Fire: If publishers draw the right lesson, it'll be that Diablo III is such a great game, consumers are willing to put up with crazy restrictions on triple A titles.

Unfortunately, I think most publishers will read it as 'consumers are willing to put up with crazy restrictions on triple A titles.', and so we're about to go into another round of crazy DRM schemes that only end up hurting us in the long run for average quality video games.

It's also important to note that's what makes Diablo III impossible to crack is not the traditional idea of DRM. Diablo III is impossible to crack because the important parts of the game aren't on your computer, they're on the central servers. It's like trying to pirate World of Warcraft - utterly pointless, because unless you can get to the central servers with a valid key/account, or a way to pirate the server software, it doesn't matter how you acquired your client. (I also wouldn't be surprised, and would be interested in hearing people's reaction, if they make Diablo III free to download and start charging a monthly fee to pay the game. You know that's where this is all going, right?)

In terms of the big picture, I find it really ironic and scary that the future of computing looks more and more like we're going back to the 1960s, with devices being dumb terminals and everything done off of central servers. This thing with Diablo III and other 'always-on' games is just another symptom of that trend.

JGH

My favorite part about this game is knowing that there is an inevitable expansion pack coming for it.

It has got my money. A BOX PC game. WHO buys those anymore..Damn..Guess I did. Egg on my effin' face.

Bobby is already showing off with his new toilet

@mbr2 said:

@chiablo said:

Anyone else getting a huge WoW vibe from Diablo 3. Like that it is essentially a simplified, single-player version of WoW?

If anything WoW is a simplified Diablo. Try playing on Hell or Inferno difficulty and see how easy it is.

Simplified meaning the mechanics, not the difficulty. It's obvious that they are using the same engine in Diablo 3 that powers their MMO behemoth, and the gameplay follows suite. It just seems like I'm playing WoW, but only have 6 hotkey slots so I have to selectively chose which abilities I want.

In my opinion, this is WoW lite, not Diablo 2-2.

This just proves that people couldn't care less for a drm that needs to be always online or, at least, it seems that way. Just keep supporting games that have this type of drm and, in the future, all games, single player or not, will have a persisten internet connection.

@xxNBxx: its fucking 75$ in europe, so Bobby probably buy two of those :D

@Dragon_Fire said:

I'm guessing no one even cares about online all the time DRM, or the lack of LAN & offline singleplayer?

All the people who care about it are loudly expressing their opinions on the D3 forums. Everyone else is too busy enjoying the game.

Draconian DRM wins, thanks gamers.

I need to get mine too, but I need a new PC first. Boo... :/

@Bakumatsu said:

This just proves that people couldn't care less for a drm that needs to be always online or, at least, it seems that way. Just keep supporting games that have this type of drm and, in the future, all games, single player or not, will have a persisten internet connection.

Diablo is more or less an online game. It's not like the requirement of being connected to the internet at all times is there simply for DRM, it's to stop people from hacking and ruining the online experience for all involved (and to keep the auction house economy stable). I don't think you need to worry about actual single player games requiring internet connections in the near future.

The amount of paranoia/hate D3 is getting because of such trivial things is pretty silly. If you want to argue that it shouldn't be a requirement, fine, I can even agree to that. But this isn't the downfall of civilization or gaming.

Do people still LAN?

@mmzOne said:

@CaLe said:

Do people still LAN?

Yes.

and do people still LAN without internet?

That many copies for a PC game is a game-changer, for better or worse.  
 
If it makes devs/publishers consider making PC exclusives which wouldn't otherwise have been made, then that's great.  If it means games which we'd have been getting anyway will now have always-online DRM shoehorned into them then that's sucky.  If it legitimises a 'release it broken and fix it later' mentality then that would be unfortunate too - nobody should get the free pass Blizzard has been given for that.
 
Bit of a mixed bag.

COME ON BLIZZ!?