Little bump here, I hope it is not undesired.
I was browsing the new French 2023 market thread
here and I saw the
Diablo 4 figures.
I could not help but recall this little impasse we were left in as far as console/PC split due to no Steam/B.net for Circana from ATVI which covers US/CA.
France - 2023
Diablo IV
PC:
314,413
Consoles:
168,083
65% PC
35% Console
Small caveat that bundles are not included.
But the bundles for D4 were only for Series X consoles, so that would be a very neglible amount for a market like France and the fact Series X were not really produced at a big rate in Q1-Q2 last year.
So in conclusion, in this particular market, Diablo 4 is seemingly a PC centric game.
Since the creation of this thread we've also had the 2023 UK data with this
thread.
The charts say total sales for
Diablo 4 were
442,874 with
67,700 physical.
We also see that console digital sales for were
150,895 and
224,289 for PC.
With the very likely situation that all physical sales are consoles, this would lead us into:
PC:
224,289
Consoles:
218,595(150,895+67,700)
That's pretty much 50/50 for the UK market.
Pretty noticeable difference between the two.
I looked at their PC splits for other titles and in general France and the UK are quite similar across the board besides Diablo 4 which looks to be an outlier.
Is it just a difference due to Xbox being a stronger brand in the UK versus continental Europe?
Was there more marketing done there? What about those Series X bundles?
With this in mind, global sales figures is probably very PC centric when you include the PC centric European markets(like Germany, with
600k sales within the launch month) and the VERY VERY PC centric Asian markets.
That being said, that's global.
That's a bit tough to know for sure. It could genuinely be that consumers are opting for console versions over PC, especially considering that anecdotal reports online suggest that, aside from losing precision spell targeting and a less ideal UI navigation, the game plays just as well or better on console. Also... Diablo hasn't had a new numbered entry in over a decade, play habits change with enough time, and Steam sales estimates don't give the impression of PC sales being stronger when it has over 12 million players as of last August (even accounting for the sales on Battle.net).
TL; DR - I'd need to see the actual PC sales data before I would confidently say that half the game's sales are on PC.
When we know at least roughly know how well the games that bookend D4 on the Circana lists performed, if we believe that PC sales are more than 50% of its sales and we know PC sales are basically untracked, we're saying that D4 would be close to if not absolutely rivalling the wizard game for the #1 spot on Circana's charts this year. I know Diablo is well-liked, but is it that level of universally well-received by consumers? From the data we have, my gut says no.
So it leads me to believe that the game is not as PC sales heavy as is being assumed, unless data can be produced to validate the assumption that PC makes up the majority of sales, in which case I concede to the evidence.
With this new data, it does seem plausible(at least in my mind) that the PC version would possibly account for half the units sold, imo.
But what do you think?
Also, do we have any idea about console sales for Canada?
One of the reason why I asked earlier in this post if Canada would behave more like the UK(50%)or France(65%) is that I have don't have a concrete idea about the strength of Xbox in Canada(relative to other markets) and I was hoping you might know something about that.
theesa.ca
