Did Amazon leak the Diablo 3 Release Date?

With an announcement regarding the long-awaited release of Diablo 3 approaching, all of us have been on the edge of our seats waiting for more information. 

We may have gotten that announcement early.  The release date according to Amazon recently showed up as April 17th, 2012. This would mix perfectly with Blizzard's expectation that Diablo 3 will be a 'Spring release' in the second quarter of 2012. 

Curiously, Amazon removed their expected release date from the product shortly after. April 17th was originally listed as the date here, although now it just reads "2012". Interesting.

Now, we've seen this kind of thing happen before. Blizzard products have often been given a tentative release by sellers, often turning out to be way off. However, there are a few factors that make this a different case. 

First of all, we are getting very close to the announcement we're expecting from Blizzard "in the coming weeks" of a release day announcement. If Blizzard were to announce the release in the middle of March, a mid-April release sounds realistic. 

Secondly, the fact that Amazon was willing (or forced) to take down their date suggests that it may not have been such a rough estimate after all. Could they know something we don't?

For now, all we can do is wait for more information. While it is fun to speculate on every new piece of evidence that pops up, we won't know the release date for sure until Blizzard wants us to. Still, this is more reason to get excited about knowing the release. If you believe Blizzard, we'll all know in a couple weeks.

Source: Tom's Hardware