That is a pretty terrifying number — two million people actually played the beta for a video game. Not the actual video game, just the beta. Wow.
As reported by Joystiq, Activision’s earnings recent call revealed the humongous statistic.
“We recently conducted an open beta stress test for Diablo 3, where anyone could download and try out the game,” said Blizzard President Michael Morhaime. “The response we got was huge, with more than two million people worldwide participating in the open beta.”
It speaks to the incredible hype surrounding Diablo III and its impending release. It also speaks to people love of getting access to stuff early. Usually these things appeal to a core, niche audience — but two million? I’d say that’s stretching things a little. Either the core audience of Diablo is incredibly large, or more and more people are becoming savvy about these kinds of things.
It’s been funny watching what betas have slowly evolved into. To begin with it was about gaining information and testing connection speeds, balancing issues and what not. Now it’s more like an interesting type of marketing. It’s great, don’t get me wrong. In fact I love it — what better way to get word out about your game than to simply let them try it for a while?
Two million people… that is massive.
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