CD Projekt Red Praises Witcher 3 Performance on Switch
Five years on from The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt’s initial release and Geralt of Rivia is still managing to attract loads of new fans. Last year saw CD Projekt RED bring the game to the Nintendo Switch, opening the door for a whole new platform’s worth of players to experience the massive (and massively-acclaimed) open-world RPG for the first time, and from the look of it, that move has been paying off pretty nicely.
The company touched upon the game’s performance during its latest earnings call with investors this week. There, CEO Adam Kicinski revealed that its revenue this year has seen a noticeable increase over the year prior. Much of that, he said, is due to the popularity of the Netflix Witcher series attracting new fans to the game series, as well as the general boost that video games sales have received as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic forcing people to stay home more.
Outside of these factors, though, The Witcher 3 has been doing very well on the Switch, with Kocinski highlighting its success in particular. While he didn’t go into specifics with sales figures, he nevertheless called it a “nice revenue driver” and said that it “performed really well.” Of course, the game has benefitted from an extended period of time without competition from CD Projekt RED’s next big title, Cyberpunk 2077, which has been delayed multiple times from its original April release. That being said, with all of the new major games that have come out in 2020, it’s still impressive that the Switch re-release was able to hold its own.
It also helps that The Witcher 3 boasts one of the most impressive Switch ports of any game, somehow managing to squeeze one of the technically-demanding RPGs ever made onto a 32GB cartridge with only a few major visual downgrades. Add to that the fact that it can now be taken on the go, and it’s easy to see why fans new and old have been flocking to it.
Better yet, CD Projekt RED has continued to support it, with the Switch version getting updates as recently as last month. Despite being on lower-end technology, it seems like the port is just as valuable to the company as the game’s older, more powerful versions.
While Cyberpunk 2077 looks set to be CD Projekt RED’s biggest moneymaker in the coming year, the company isn’t moving on from Geralt just yet, as it recently confirmed that The Witcher 3 will be getting ports for the PS5 and Xbox Series X next year, making it even easier for newcomers to dive in.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is available for PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One, with PS5 and Xbox Series X versions coming in 2021.
Source: Seeking Alpha
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