Activision Blizzard is touting Diablo 4 as Blizzard Entertainment's fastest-selling game of all time — no small feat for a company that also publishes World of Warcraft and the Overwatch and Starcraft series. But what does that claim really mean?
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The report reporting Diablo 4's success, of course, says it includes both console and PC sales, but doesn't reveal specifics. Publishers rarely give out this information anymore, mostly because they don't want to have points of comparison for later releases in the same franchise. That's why there are claims like "faster sales," which are backed up by player numbers rather than unit sales or money.
“Diablo 4 has been played for 93 million hours, or over 10,000 years,” Activision Blizzard says in the first paragraph of the announcement. Not bad considering the first players got their hands on it about 100 hours ago (June 2, for those who pre-ordered one of its special editions).
But looking back at Activision Blizzard's previous statements regarding bigger, better, or faster sales, one finds:
- 2020: World of Warcraft: Shadowlands: Shadowlands is being touted as “the fastest-selling PC game of all time, across the entire industry.” Activision actually put a number on it, 3.7 million units sold. Sold through means it was purchased by actual customers, as opposed to “sold-in,” which means units that retailers ordered and have on their shelves.
- 2018: World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth is also the "fastest-selling World of Warcraft expansion of all time"
- 2016: Overwatch garnered more than 7 million players — not necessarily sales — in the week following its launch on PlayStation 4, Windows PC, and Xbox One on May 24, 2016. Activision Blizzard later reported that Overwatch players had logged 119 million hours of gameplay. (Two more stats: Overwatch's beta reached 9.7 million people, and the free-to-play Overwatch 2 had 25 million players in its first 10 days of release.).
- 2012: Diablo 3 – Here's a great point of comparison, as it's the direct predecessor to today's game: "3.5 million copies sold, setting a new all-time record for fastest-selling PC game.".
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The difference, of course, is that these three games are all PC releases – Diablo 3 didn't come to consoles until 2013 (PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360) and 2014 (PS4 and Xbox One). Diablo 4 was released simultaneously on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X on June 5th.
So how big is the launch? We'll probably find out when Activision Blizzard reports its next quarterly earnings report to investors - which for a June launch will be around September. The question remains whether Diablo 4's multi-platform launch, from day one, delivered sales that were huge multiples of the 3, 4 and 5 million sales that Activision Blizzard previously reported? Did it barely surpass them?
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source of information: polygon.com
