Geralt continues to be a very, very popular boy—clearly it's his easy-going nature and love of jokes—with CD Projekt reporting that sales exceeded 50 million copies this year. Not bad considering that the last of the trilogy launched five years ago, but since then there's been no dearth of The Witcher, with the likes of Thronebreaker and ports filling the gap since Geralt retired.
This time last year, CDP reported that it had surpassed 40 million sales, with more than half of those contributed by The Witcher 3 alone. That's a leap of around 10 million in only 12 months, which is wild considering that no new Witcher games have launched in the last year.
Netflix's Witcher adaptation undoubtedly has a lot to do with this. It aired in December 2019, spurring on sales of The Witcher 3, which saw a spike of 554 percent compared to December 2018. The following month, it broke 100,000 concurrent players on Steam for the first time.
The Witcher 3 also launched on Switch last year, followed by Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales in January, which must have given the series a bump. The older Witcher games have also risen in popularity this year, both getting a big boost in December and January. Even now, peak players are higher than at any point since launch.
This has all translated into more cash for CDP, of course, which saw sales revenue increase by more than 2.5 times the figures from last year's first quarter, hitting £39 million/$48 million, while net profits saw an even bigger increase compared to last year, reaching £19/$23 million.
While things are slowing down now that we're getting further away from all the buzz and excitement around Netflix's The Witcher, it's coming back for a second round. The Witcher Season 2 was expected to air next year, but that was before production was halted due to the coronavirus. Hopefully we'll still be able to catch up with Geralt and the gang in 2021, but in the meantime there's always the games.
