The Witcher 3, one of CD Projekt's most heavily advertised game in their history, released this week. The Polish company's advertising campaign, which included the award winning Killing Monsters trailer, appears to have paid off.
According to Reuters, CD Projekt managed to sell 1.5 million pre-orders of The Witcher 3. Sales for The Witcher series have increased since the original game released in 2007 as the popularity of the series and CD Projekt Red has grown. That, coupled with their massive advertising push this year, resulted in massive sales for the game. On pre-orders alone The Witcher 3 nearly outsold The Witcher 2's 1.7 million copies sold during its first year, and did outsell The Witcher's 1 million first year sales. CD Projekt's CEO, Adam Kicinski, said that the games pre-orders indicate that sales will be many times higher than the past iterations of the series.
Mr. Kicinski also talked about the future of CD Projekt Red in the interview, saying, "We broke into the mainstream. It is such a moment in our firm's history that after some years people will look differently at CD Projekt before and after this release." CD Projekt Red is currently Poland's biggest gaming company and has been looking to break into the mainstream AAA gaming market. The Witcher 3 appears to have achieved this goal, with a predicted 7 million copies to be sold this year, resulting in 369 million zlotys ($97.5 million) in profit.
It also seems that CD Projekt will continue to use the AAA strategy to continue to sell games: Make games with the same quality and polish as The Witcher 3, throw a bunch of money into the marketing budget, which will hopefully result in higher sales. The profits from The Witcher 3 will be used to finance two expansions as well as more AAA quality games, such as the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077.
In the same interview, Kicinski also mentioned that the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 will be delayed for the rest of 2015 and 2016. This time will be spent making the additional content for The Witcher 3.
We recently reviewed The Witcher 3, giving it our first 10 for a video game.
Are you happy for The Witcher 3's success? Are you looking forward to more from CD Projekt? What do you think of the direction CD Projekt is going? Leave a comment to discuss the subject.
