The Witcher Book and Game Sales Are Up 500% on Last Year

Sales of The Witcher franchise have spiked in the wake of Netflix's recent adaptation. According to analyst firm The NPD Group, both the book series and the games that they inspired saw renewed interest in the weeks after the show debuted.

The Witcher quickly broke Netflix viewing records after its launch in December last year, but its impact has also been felt elsewhere. In the two weeks following the series' arrival on the streaming platform, book revenue was up 562 per cent on the same period in 2018. Much of that came from The Last Wish, a book of short stories that introduce people to the world of The Witcher, many of which were adapted for TV. The novels' new-found success helped drive a massive new print run on both sides of the Atlantic, with 500,000 new books being ordered by the publisher.

While increased book sales are good news for author Andrezj Sapkowski's bottom line, game developer CD Projekt Red received its own bonus from renewed interest in the franchise. Player counts for The Witcher 3 on Steam reached records during December, and The NPD Group's report states that physical sales of the game in December were up 554 per cent on the same period last year. That number was inflated by the recent Nintendo Switch release, but even when excluding the port, which was released in October 2019, sales were up 63 per cent.

It's good news for Netflix, of course, but it also bodes well for fans of the games. A huge spike in interest like this is unlikely to have gone unnoticed by CDPR, and while they're still hard at work on Cyberpunk 2077, it's looking increasingly likely that the developer will be tempted back to The Continent sometime soon.