Diablo III Shatters Sales Projections, Becomes Fastest Selling PC Game of All Time

Regardless of the collection of controversy surrounding its login errors and always-online requirements, Diablo III has managed to become the fastest selling PC game of all time.

Within the first 24 hours of its release, Diablo III cleared 3.5 million copies sold. Games sales continued to be strong throughout the following week, bringing the total to 6.3 million copies sold.

Another 1.2 million received a free copy of the game for signing up for the World of Warcraft Annual Pass, technically making the game’s one-day haul 4.7 million. Diablo III has also quickly become extremely popular in Internet gaming rooms. For example, in Korea, more than 39 percent of gamers in these online rooms are defending Sanctuary from the relentless demon hordes.

These totals are immensely higher than the initial sales projections for the highly publicized game. Between 3.5 and 5 million copies were expected to be sold within the entire first year.

The underestimated draw of the Diablo series led to several server errors within its first week, and subsequently the online-only game play has not been popular with fans of the series. Because of the rapidly growing community, Blizzard has since publically apologized for the connection problems. They have announced that they will delay the real money auction house to focus on the stability of their servers.