Diablo III Pre-Orders Trounce Max Payne 3

Today is the official launch day of two gigantic releases for gamers across the nation (and the world,) with pre-order numbers racking up thousands of first-day players for both Diablo III and Max Payne 3. According to VGChartz ranking the week ending on the 12th of May, Diablo III has taken both versions of Max Payne 3 to lunch, pulling in a total of 59,463 pre-orders for the week while Max Payne for Xbox 360 brought in 19,263 new pre-release customers and the PlayStation 3 release saw 10,152 new pre-release cash tossers. These numbers of course pale in comparison to the total pre-orders for each of the two games, the numbers becoming much more disparate in the process.

While it's not extremely fair to compare a massive PC role-playing game release like Diablo III to a third-person shooter like Max Payne 3, you'd have to be living under a rock not to have seen the media blast-out between these two beasts over the past few weeks. What we're seeing here is Rockstar Games going up against Blizzard Entertainment, creators of the rest of the massively popular Diablo series and the most popular MMORPG of all time, World of Warcraft.

Pre-order totals for the Xbox 360 version of Max Payne 3 came in at 158,551 new customers while the PlayStation 3 version brought in 123,046 players of its own. Combined, 281,597 Max Payne 3 players don't have anything on the 823,992 Diablo III pre-order players taking on the forces of evil today. If you're in either camp, you're likely not going to be reading this any way you look at it, as online and offline games are burning up consoles and gaming PCs starting earlier today across the nation and the planet.

Happy gaming, folks, and stay tuned for release numbers which should be racked up by either production group by the end of the week. Expect the best!