From an interview with Valve's Chet Faliszek on CVG:
"As we get closer to launch we see the reaction to the demo, pre-orders are four times what Left 4 Dead 1 was, people's excitement, the boycott itself and how it's changed... I think people are just excited now," he said.
As for the infamous boycott, Faliszek says Valve always planned to continue updating the original Left 4 Dead. "One of the weird things at E3 was we knew we weren't showing the complete package, we knew there was a whole bunch of stuff we were holding back but we wanted to show something," he said."