The Witcher Series passes major sales milestone, shipping over 50 million copies
by Brad Lang
It’s difficult to imagine that in the year 2020, there may be someone who owns some kind of video game console and has not somehow come into contact with The Witcher 3. Actually, let’s broaden that out: The entire Witcher franchise! Ever since the release of the critically mixed yet commercially adored Netflix series based on the Witcher novels, CD Projekt Red’s fantasy role-playing franchise has been selling in spades despite the latest mainline entry releasing over five years ago. It’s fine, take a breath. I know how shocking it must be to have someone confirm that The Witcher 3 released five years ago. What is time? Over the course of those five years, The Witcher series has managed to ship a whopping 50 million copies. That’s a lot of nude Geralts in steaming tubs!
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt makes up more than half of those sales, shipping 28.3 million copies by itself. Which is more than a little impressive, especially considering that 12 million of those sales were on PC and 10.8 million were on PlayStation 4. According to industry analyst Daniel Ahmad, before the announcement of The Witcher 3 the entire Witcher game franchise had only sold 5 million units. Given the almighty experience that is The Witcher 3 and the hordes of rabid fans who insist on it being the greatest game every conceived by mere mortal hands, it’s not surprising that it’s had such a major influence on those sales numbers.
CD Projekt Red is also now in a great position as they were recently named Europe’s most valuable game company, beating out industry titan Ubisoft. This comes just a few months before the release of the highly anticipated Cyberpunk 2077 which nearly everyone is absolutely frothing over at this point. Cyberpunk 2077 is out this September and I for one am very optimistic about it.