You love The Witcher 3, I love The Witcher 3, we all love The Witcher 3. It’s the game that just won’t stop going, like an unkillable stream of revenue. It’s like CDPR couldn’t stop selling the game even if they wanted to, people are just frothing for Geralt and his sexy bathtubs filled with monster scorpions! While the game has obviously not reached the sales peak it once hit back in 2015 when it first launched, that didn’t mean sales in 2019 were anything to turn your nose up at. The Witcher 3 is still pulling in heaps of money, presumably due to the success of the Netflix series and a port to the Nintendo Switch that we can only assume was achieved through the use of black magic and fans wanting to toss a coin to their Witcher.
According to CD Projekt Red’s 2019 financial report, The Witcher 3 sold roughly 7 million copies last year, just 2.5 millions units shy of it’s best year in 2015. Now, that’s a pretty sizable difference, sure. Yet when you look at the years between 2019 and 2015, the numbers tell a different story. In 2018, the game’s worst year for sales, only around 2.7 million copies were sold, which compared to the 7 million last year and the 9.5 million in 2015 certainly indicates that 2019 saw a massive spike in revenue. Interestingly, the majority of the game’s sales last year were still predominantly on PC with the Nintendo Switch port only accounting for 11% of sales. Still, that 11% represents around 770 000 copies, so that’s still pretty impressive.
What does this all mean for the future of CD Projekt Red? Well, in a nutshell, they’re probably holding a few very fancy parties in the future. This is more just really interesting data, showing a trend in sales that’s so uncommon. Seeing a game have its second-best year in sales four years after its initial release is unheard of and fortunately for the world it couldn’t have happened to a better development studio. Raise a glass to CDPR!
Last Updated: April 9, 2020
