May 23, 2012 by Paul Curtin
Now that the dust has settled from last week’s shootout between two of this year’s biggest titles going head to head on the same release date, it looks like Diablo III is emerging as the victor. Blizzard is reporting that more than 3.5 million copies of Diablo III were sold just within the first 24 hours, making it the fastest selling PC game of all time and easily beating Blizzard’s previous release of StarCraft II which did 1.5 million in the first 48 hours.
Blizzard has also pointed out that the 3.5 million doesn’t include the additional 1.2 million players who received Diablo III as part of their World of Warcraft yearly subscription deal. After factoring in WoW subscribers and sales after the first 24 hours, the grand total of dungeon slayers after the first week is looking to be close to 6.3 million worldwide.
Not to be completely blown away by the competition, Take-Two Interactive is also reporting very strong numbers for their highly anticipated third installment in the Max Payne franchise. In its first week, Max Payne 3 has sold over 3 million copies on both the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Max’s numbers should also get a little boost when the PC version is released in less than two weeks on June 1st.
We absolutely loved Max Payne 3 and as of right now it’s our current front-runner for 2012’s Game of the Year. We’re also still in the process of powering through Diablo III for our review, but with the amount of content it’s taking us a little longer than beating Payne. Which of the two did you pick up last week? Diablo III, Max Payne 3, or both like us?
