Utter bull-schit. People's livelihoods are dependent on the success of the products they produce. No one in games publishing is making an absurd 'financial plan' that decides to blow all the budget on developing a quality product OR spend all the money on marketing, based on pre-orders when they don't begin until the game is 80-90% developed. The big decisions that affect the final quality of D2 were made 1-2 years ago. By pre-order time it's too late to significantly alter the fundamentals of the game. And it's the job of the marketing dept to build hype for a product, and promote it accordingly. It's their entire purpose. But maybe you know that as you are such an expert on business LOL