A public service announcement to all the barbarians, assassins, monks, witch doctors, and wizards out there: Mark your calendar for May 15. Activision Blizzard
The game is now available for pre-purchase and runs for a standard $60. Diablo III has already spurred considerable interest and anticipation within the gaming community, which goes to show how strong Activision Blizzard's franchises are. We're talking about a game series that originally debuted in 1996, and saw a sequel in 2000.
That means the series hasn't seen a major release in over a decade, yet gamers would brave a dungeon crawling with Blood Lords to get their hands on a copy. That's what I call loyalty. Including expansion packs, the franchise has sold north of 20 million copies to date, and some analysts expect this latest iteration to sell roughly 5 million copies.
The company is even offering the game free to gamers who are willing to commit to a full year's subscription to its other wildly popular franchise, World of Warcraft, which normally runs about $15 per month. That's a smart move to reinvigorate Activision's biggest cash cow as subscriber figures continue to slip. Hopefully it will deter some of those night elves from defecting to become Jedi padawans in Electronic Arts'
Activision has incredible franchise strength, as three of its most popular series have been around for ages. The original Warcraft came out in 1994, followed by Diablo in 1996, and then Starcraft in 1998 -- all of which are still paying gaming dividends.
Take-Two Interactive's
This vital brand strength is one thing that social gamer Zynga
On the other hand, it looks like Diablo will be around so long as Hell-spawned demons need exterminating. At that rate, this franchise might last into eternity.
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