Survey 411…
18-60 M/F
US Only
N=392
April 24, 2022
CONVERSATION STARTER
Would you purchase Witcher 4 if it was released today?
The possibility of a new addition to the legendary Witcher game series was teased last month and it piqued our interest. We considered The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (includes Blood & Wine and Hearts of Stone) to be the greatest RPG ever made until Red Dead Redemption 2 was released.
To some degree, CD Projekt Red is still recovering from one of the greatest video game blunders in the history of video games, but a new addition to the Witcher franchise could claw back most, if not all of the revenue the studio left on the table with Cyberpunk 2077.
Before jumping into the data it’s worth noting that CD Projekt Red has already taken a step in the right direction by committing to Unreal Engine rather than REDengine, which was used for Cyberpunk 2077. This is a strong signal to the market that the developers are making a commitment to creating a stable game with clear paths to multiple platforms.
THE DATA
The first question we asked ourselves was “If Witcher 4 were released today, how would it fare?”. The betrayal of Cyberpunk is still burned into the foreheads of gamers worldwide, are they ready to trust a new product from CD Projekt Red? Apparently so, but with a price.
Based on our surveys, if the developer were to release Witcher 4 today on console, mobile and PC, the game would sell approximately 17.2M copies in the US. BUT, yes, there is a but, there appears to be a consumer trust tax. A majority of the respondents indicated that they would wait until the game was already released before purchasing, so we were forced to adjust our sales period to “within 4-8 months of release”. This is a tough blow to the revenue of our fictional scenario. Discounting generally starts within three months of launch to convert any consumers who are on the fence, so any holdouts equate to lost value. With our adjusted discounting against a typical sales curve, our gross revenue estimates are approximately $892M during our designated window.
If this sounds like a lot to you it shouldn’t. Witcher 3 has an incredible fan base and the awareness of the IP extends well beyond the video game industry. RDR2, initially released only on console, sold more units in eight days than its predecessor Red Dead Redemption did in eight years, eventually reaching roughly 27M WW in just under a year. If Witcher 4 is as rich and immersive as Witcher 3, and it isn’t laden with bugs, we think it would easily surpass the sales records of its rival Rockstar Games.
INTERESTING NOTE
The last piece of our Witcher 4 dive was to find out if any consumers would not purchase Witcher 4 based off of their experience with Cyberpunk 2077. The bitter taste of Cyberpunk appears to have a lingering effect on willingness to purchase; nearly $53M in lost value would be due to players who are no longer interested in being a CD Projekt Red customer.
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