If you wondered why you were having so many problems signing on to play Diablo III last week, Blizzard may have revealed a reason. In a new press release today, the developer announced that in just the first 24 hours since it was launched, the PC game sold over 3.5 million copies worldwide. Blizzard claims that is the fastest selling PC exclusive game ever.
That's not even the entire story. Blizzard said that an additional 1.2 million players of World of Warcraft got the game for free. This was the result of a promotion that allowed those MMO gamers to get Diablo III when they signed up to an annual subscription to World of Warcraft. That means that last week, over 4.7 million copies of Diablo III were either sold or sent out for free worldwide in the first 24 hours.
Blizzard also said today that in one week, the number of Diablo III copies that were officially sent out went up to 6.3 million. That doesn't include copies of the game that were installed in the many Internet cafes in South Korea. Blizzard says Diablo III is now the top played game in those venues.
On June 7, the citizens of Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Brazil and Russia will be able to purchase the game in their local retail stores. Access to the digital download version of Diablo III is already available in the Latin American countries. Russia will be able to purchase the digital download version as well on June 7.
