14 DAY TRIAL // Arvind Bhatia, who is an analyst watching the video game industry at publisher Activision Blizzard, has estimated that the upcoming Diablo III hack and slash will manage to sell no less than 3.5 million units during the current calendar year and a further half a million during 2013.
In a note addressed to the industry, the analyst stated that even “releasing after a gap of 12 years” Diablo III still has the “potential to sell more than 4 million units life-time, including 3.5 million units this year.”
The results for Diablo III will be close to those of its predecessor in the series, which launched in June 2000 and managed to move around 4 million copies to gamers before August 2001.
It is not clear whether the analyst is taking into account just physical copies of Diablo III or whether he is also counting the digitally distributed versions that Blizzard is selling via its own Battle.net service.
The analyst has also estimated that Activision Blizzard will post solid financial results on May 9, despite the overall slump of the video game industry, which is set to see a decline of 25 percent for the month of April on the all-important United States market.
Diablo III will allow players to choose from 5 different classes and once again become embroiled in the war that rages on Earth between the forces of good and evil.
The development team is set to offer a more streamlined game experience and plenty of callbacks and references for long-term fans.
Diablo III will be launched on May 15 on the PC.
A number of job advertisements from Blizzard have also suggested that the company is thinking about bringing the game to the PlayStation 3 from Sony and the Xbox 360 from Microsoft, although to official announcement has been made about the ports.