Diablo 4 may have actually made more money in a week than Diablo Immortal did in a year
Diablo 4 - a premium game - has seemingly made a lot more money than Diablo Immortal - a free-to-play game.
In some surprising news, it appears that Diablo 4 has already made Blizzard more money than Diablo Immortal, which has been available for a year. Activision Blizzard recently revealed that Diablo 4 brought in more than $666 million in sales alone after just five days.
While we have no concrete numbers about Diablo Immortal's revenue, it is estimated that players spent $525 million on the free-to-play game in its first year.
That's according to data from Data.ai (as spotted by PCGamesN), which estimates that Diablo Immortal's 22-million player base have collectively put more than $525 million into the game, making it the 24th largest mobile game worldwide, in terms of revenue.
However, the data comes with a few major caveats. For starters, the numbers do not include the PC version of Diablo Immortal, available through the Battle.net launcher. They also do not include third-party Android launchers anywhere in the world, including China.
China is a major player in the mobile market, and Chinese players are the largest in terms of lifetime spending in Diablo Immortal, at an estimated 37%, compared to the U.S.' 24%. Considering the popularity of Android in China, there's likely a large sum of revenue that's not being included in this report, to say nothing of PC revenue.
Indeed, it's difficult enough to compare a premium, $70 minimum game on consoles and PC, to a free-to-play product that's targeting phones and is also available on PC. Diablo Immortal has been lambasted for its excessive monetisation, and player sentiment has largely focused on that.
But Diablo 4 is also a premium product that includes microtransactions on day one, and promises a battle pass in the near future, so the scales aren't quite matched. Nevertheless, we shouldn't read too much into those figures, particularly as interests change.
For example, the hype around Diablo 4 likely boosted Diablo Immortal's numbers as the most modern take on the storied franchise, something Data.ai points out could be behind a sharp rise in U.S. player spending in the game. As more people pick up Diablo 4, however, those who weren’t already invested in Immortal will drop off.