No way those 3.5 million on day one are actual sold to customers. It's either a shipment number or just publisher PR (lies).

I believe VGC much more than Activision.

I dunno if VG Chartz does this anymore, I can't seem to find that option, but we had America, Europe, Japan and the rest of the world sales.  Seems like we only track America,Europe and japan now, so if the rest of the world isn't tracked (where a ton of sales would be for Diable 3) then that could add up to the missing sales.

what is with south korea? is it tracked? i believe they like diablo as well not only starcraft and warcraft right?

i agree Ail

Where is 4.7 million coming from?

And it's a press release, I still think Blizzard can bend the truth to that statement if they want

The numbers in the PR piece were "* Based on internal company records and reports from key distribution partners. "

What that means is open to interpretation.

My guess is that the vast difference is with DL vs.retail. Downloading directly is the main way PC software of many types is sold today. So retail sales numbers have limited value/meaning. And console gaming is starting down that path as Sony and Nintendo are making (or planning to make) digital purchases available on Day 1.

Mike from Morgantown

Ah right, forgot about those.

And ok, I see it now, that does indeed read as purchased games.

Not a fan.. but to have a difference of nearly *5million copies is laughable. Digital or not. Maybe they shouldn't track games if the digital market has the majority of sold copies.

*Accounted for WoW sales since everything Wii bundled is represented in their numbers.

From the press release
"As of the first week of the game's availability, that number had already grown to more than 6.3 million.* The above figures also do not include players in Korean Internet game rooms, where Diablo III has become the top-played game, achieving a record share of more than 39% as of May 22."

while it is open to interpretation the fact they say "reports from key distribution partners" suggests that it is sellthrough rather than shipped as the shipped numbers would all be available internally, they know how many copies they sold to distributors. 

I do agree that retail sales of PC games is only a small peice of the picture these days, and growing less relevent every year.