The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has sold more than 50 million copies since its 2015 launch, according to the game’s publisher CD Projekt.
This stat was announced on Twitter, alongside the news the Witcher series to date has sold upwards of 75 million copies.
The Witcher 3 is an epic fantasy adventure. It was originally released for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC in 2015, and was ported to Nintendo Switch in 2019. The game was kept in the headlines more recently thanks to a “next-gen” update for Xbox Series and PlayStation 5 consoles, and PC, released in November 2022.
Wild Hunt’s 50 million sales have even exceeded those of role-playing rival The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which has sold upwards of 30 million copies. However, that stat is old. It dates as far back as 2016 — leaving out the Nintendo Switch port and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Anniversary Edition sales entirely.
These out-of-date figures make compiling a reliable list of the best-selling games of all time tricky, but IGN’s top 10 stats suggests the most up-to-date figures for The Witcher 3 would now place the title just inside the all-timer sales list.
What is CD Projekt Red working on?
CD Projekt did not just announce these figures for social media clout. They were part of the company’s Q1 2023 earnings report, at which it released Q1 revenue figures of more than £33 million.
The publisher-developer has spent the past two-and-a-half years attempting to restore its position close to that of The Witcher 3 glory days. Cyberpunk 2077’s launch was so disastrous the game was pulled off the PlayStation Store, due to quality issues. It would not return to PlayStation consoles for six months.
However, it has gone on to sell upwards of 20 million copies, but analysts had predicted as much as 30 million sales in the first year, pre-launch.
What are the biggest-selling games ever?
The biggest-selling modern video games include family favourite Minecraft, which had already racked-up 238 million sales by April 2021 according to Microsoft. This figure also includes mobile downloads.
For a closer comparison, Rockstar Games’s Grand Theft Auto V is the console and PC gaming leviathan of the past decade. It has shifted 175 million units in the 10 years since its original release, revealed by publisher Take-Two Interactive earlier this year — as reported by Gamespot.
Mario Kart 8 is Nintendo’s biggest smash hit, amassing 62.25 million sales according to the company’s own figures. This is despite the game launching originally on the Wii U, a console that only sold 13 million units total, with 53.79 million of those sales for the Switch version.
Nintendo’s most recent success is The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, which passed 10 million sales worldwide in just three days, becoming the fastest-selling Nintendo game ever in the US.
When is The Witcher 4 coming out?
CD Projekt Red, the development arm of CD Projekt, announced a slew of projects in development in October 2022. These include a remake of the original The Witcher, and Polaris, the current codename for The Witcher 4.
There have also been recent reports Sony is considering an acquisition of CD Projekt, whose share price currently values the company at £2.3 billion.
CD Projekt has shut down these rumours. “I can repeat what we have been saying throughout the years — CD Projekt is not for sale,” CEO Adam KiciÅski said during the company’s Q1 2023 earnings call.
