Doesn't look like we're getting CMA's preliminary decision this week.

Seeing the numbers for 2 different PC focused RPG's like these really puts it into perspective how freaking insanely popular Blizzard games are, as well as showing how much of an effect more platforms can have on your launch.

10m+ hours on the opening weekend for Baldur's Gate 3, obviously PC only there since it's on neither Xbox nor PS5 yet. An impressive number to be sure, as proven by the fact that BG3 is #9 on the Steam peak concurrent players rankings, the two stats combined show that Larian games are no longer niche, and yet as impressive as those BG3 stats are, compare to Diablo 4:

From the combined closed and open beta weekends, Diablo 4 got 61m+ hours. Now obviously some caveats here, that is 6 days vs 4 days for BG3, and 5 platforms (PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series) versus only one platform for Baldur's Gate 3, but even considering all of that 6x more hours played for Diablo 4 is impressive for sure.

Even more impressive though is Diablo 4's first full week stats, which unlike the open beta weekend, required purchasing the actual game for $70 or more (or renting the game from something like Gamefly in the US or a PC bang in Korea):

276m+ hours played. Now, again the caveats here, the Diablo 4 number is 12 days (June 1-June 12) as they included both the early access 5 days and the first 7 day week after the official release, and it is 5 platforms, PC, XB1, XS, PS4, PS5. Still, 276m hours played in 12 days is insanely impressive for Diablo 4. Just a shame that they have managed to largely collapse their playerbase since then with poor decisions, lol.

If Baldur's Gate 3 had been all 4 of it's planned platforms at launch, Windows, Mac, Xbox Series, and PS5, the hours number there obviously would have been alot bigger, shame Larian didn't have the resources for a simultaneous 4 platform launch and struggled to get splitscreen to run on Series S.

Now whats the hold up lol

Has Game Pass won? After 13 years, Sony will no longer be reporting PSN+ figures. This is mere days before Xbox Live Gold adds 10s of millions of members to the subscription service through Game Pass Core, the final acquisition of ACT and the unstoppable juggernaut known as The Starfield release.

It'll be interesting to see how many subs Game Pass grows by when GP Core is added, if we get an update quick enough then it could give us a rough idea of how many were still on Xbox Live Gold only.

A game that shipped?

• 3 years (Pentiment): 9 months in pre-production and ~27 months in development.
• Icewind Dale: 14 months.
• Icewind Dale II: 10 months.
• Neverwinter Nights II was in development for over 3 years (I think?) but I only came on for about 6 months at the end.
• Fallout: New Vegas: 18 months.
• Pillars of Eternity: 2 years, 10 months.
• Deadfire: 2 years, 6 months.

September seems certain now, Lmao.

Then in September we'll be saying "October seems certain now"