Analysts predict 3.5m Diablo 3 sales in 2012

Analysts have started their usual predictions regarding sales figures, this time with Diablo III which is due to launch later this month.
Arvind Bhatia of analysts Sterne Agee believes that Blizzard’s dungeon crawler will sell 3.5m copies by the end of 2012. Lifetime sales are estimated at somewhere around the 4m mark.
“We think Diablo III, which is releasing after a gap of 12 years since the launch of Diablo II, has the potential to sell more than 4 million units life-time,” said Bhatia. “We note that Diablo II had sold 4m units by August 2001 or 14 months following its initial release in June 2010.”
Diablo III is due to launch in ten short days, on 15 May, for PC and OS X.
Those of you serious about Diable III should check out our recently launch Diablo III Hero Planner, which allows you to build complete setups of your character (and view stat changes) within your browser before taking them in game.