Another big factor would be the large number of casual gamers who will only consider buying a game after it has been released and several user reviews have been made at websites like IGN. A lot of those potential sales will be steered by how well it performs for the front-running pioneers. If there aren't many problems, and DRM seems to be a non-issue to most, then it will score well and that could help support a lot more sales. On the flipside, if half of the early users have problems with the DRM servers and other bugs, then a whole lot of casual gamers will see "Readers' Score: 5/10" and keep right on going.
And as much as we don't like it... casual gamers are where the big $$ is at.
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