Analyst: Diablo III will sell 5 million copies in its first year

[sethnintendo]

TruckOSaurus said:

Lusche said:
I think a big chunk of sales is lost by the 'annual pass'
idk how many committed to the annual pass, but all those users are lost sales because they get the game for free.
I think I read something about 1million+

We don't really know how many of those users will be "lost sales" because we'll never know how many of those people would have bought Diablo III anyway without the promotion but you can be sure of one thing: they wouldn't be doing this promotion if they didn't think it would benefit them in the end.

My guess is that they want to "hook" WoW players into Diablo's world, turning them into new Diablo fans thus creating a bigger pool of potential buyers for the inevitable expansion down the line.

Plus, they just got money for an entire year of WoW from the player...  They aren't "losing" money.