News

Diablo III hits 10M sales in record time, World of Warcraft suffers
Posted: 03.08.2012 05:40 by JonahFalcon Comments: 6
Activision has announed in its quarterly investor call that Diablo III has become the fastest selling PC game of all-time with 10M units sold. The game had sold 6.3M in its first week, with 3.5M in the first day.

(Of those 3.5M, 1.2M of them were World of Warcraft annual pass holders, who received the game free.)

In the call, Activision also revealed Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure was the top selling videogame of 2012 if one counts the collectible figurines that functioned as physical DLC. The publisher expressed optimism that the upcoming Skylanders Giants would be equally successful.

Not all of the news was bright, however. In the past three quarters, World of Warcraft lost over a million subscribers; its paid subscribership stands at 9.1M. The publisher hopes that Mists of Pandaria will attract new and former subscribers to the venerable MMO.

Comments

By herodotus (SI Herodotus) on Aug 03, 2012
herodotus
Not at all surprising given the anticipation and expectations. Whatever your opinion now it certainly would have paid for quite a few over-priced dinners during the development period (or should I say 'era').
By SiyaenSokol (SI Elite) on Aug 03, 2012
SiyaenSokol
Blizzard van't expect of World of Warcraft to keep on running the way it did forever. In fact, I think that it is due time for the game to become free to play, not like it is going to happen, because WoW still makes them a decent amount of money.

I am glad that Diablo sold so incredibly well, but still disappointed that Blizzard had so many years to fix basic things in the game, and still their game wasn't "polished" as they would say.
By unsilviu (SI Core) on Aug 04, 2012
unsilviu
True, I wouldn't expect Blizzard to change their model until they're at about 5 million at least, which would still mean 75 million $/mo. But it would be easy to implement a F2P model, mounts and pets and all kinds of vanity transmogs could be real sellers.
By SiyaenSokol (SI Elite) on Aug 05, 2012
SiyaenSokol
I agree. People love Downloadable content, and also achievement hunting, so if it means having you buy mounts and collectables, but still being able to play for free, they would actually still earn a lot of money.
By lichlord (SI Core) on Aug 06, 2012
lichlord
i don't agree on the DLCs i know plenty of people around my neighborhood whod rather get em illigal then buying them and tbh i give em right DLCs look more like here buy this useless crap overpriced unless it really expands on something i rather see the old ways of game expansions like they doing with sins of a solar empire and each expansion does give many new and proper contents
By herodotus (SI Herodotus) on Aug 06, 2012
herodotus
Much as I am against Piracy, I think the industry does have to address it's practices of content delivery and pricing to bring gamers back to feeling they are being treated fairly by games publishers. It really is the only way to fight illegal downloads and sales.