Not anything as exciting as a release date of Diablo 3(May 15th if you missed it), as much as an analyst saying that they expect the game to sell over 5 million copies the first year that it is out. While this isn’t really news as much as it is some random guy guessing and throwing numbers out there in an attempt not to sound wrong, it does kind of seem low. Oddly the man making these less than bold claims also starts saying random things about the next MMO, that World of Warcraft will probably see a bump from some promotions, and stops short of claiming we should kill a loved one so Blizzard notices us.
I wonder if this is also the same analyst that said that Modern Warfare would sell 6 million units day one (it would later sell 3.6 Million units); because that number seems kind of low and this could be attempt to not claim “100000 billion units in three hours!” that most people in this line of work normally claim which is almost refreshing. What is really interesting to me is that people still report these things like they are facts. On the day that the release date is announced I guess that it might get a couple more hits to your site to mention Diablo (I am clearly guilty of that action at this moment), but don’t believe this guy, or any other person claiming to know the future sales of anything.
Source: ComputerandVideoGames.com