CD Projekt RED’s CEO, Marcin Iwinski, has confirmed that The Witcher franchise has sold more on the PC than on consoles. This was revealed in an interview with YouTube’s Maciej Pius who had the opportunity to sit down with Marcin Iwinski about the past, the present and the changes in video game industry.
As Marcin Iwinski said at one point:
“Consoles began for real with PS2 from Sony, and then with X360. PS wasn’t available for everyone. It was an expensive toy with expensive games. I was already distributing games at that time and I remember what was the expenditure for video games. PS was available for more affluent people and PS2 was available for the masses and started to develop this market. However, the PC still holds strong. Most of The Witcher sales are for the PC, though consoles started selling very well. “
Marcin also confirmed that he prefers playing on the PC, that he’s a big fan of RPG games, that he has not played yet Fallout 4, and that he really enjoyed Telltale’s games.
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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PCMR 😛
Best pic ever! :))
One of them is Goku SSJ 5
Master race looks very… gay.
umiru bolno..
But pc gamers are pirates!
Bu-but without consoles, Witcher 3 wouldn’t have existed!.
I see them throwing this in as “don’t worry we didn’t forget you guys, you sorta helped out a wee bit”.
witcher 3 sales are 70% on consoles
retail sales
overall sales, that information comes from the developers which have all the numbers, digital+retail+special editions/bundles
That is incorrect. The PC has sold more over all for witcher 3. At first Consoles did outsell. The Ceo said the following….
CD Projekt RED’s CEO, Marcin Iwinski, has confirmed that The Witcher franchise has sold more on the PC than on consoles. This was revealed in an interview with YouTube’s Maciej Pius who had the opportunity to sit down with Marcin Iwinski about the past, the present and the changes in video game industry
the witcher franchise sold more on pc because witcher 1 and 2 are not on ps4 dimwit, we’re talking about the witcher 3 only here which sold 70% on consoles
xbox is pc right now so it doesn’t really matter
It’s like the famous: “You’re a funny guy Sully, I like you. That’s why I’m going to kill you last.”
But then: “Remember, Sully, when I promised to kill you last? I lied.”
Most sales of TW3 were on consoles. Even if they weren’t, that is extra money that CDPR banked on making when spending the time and money it took to make TW3. I have no issue believing them when they say that.
The whole discussion of this article is dick-waving about a franchise that
A) Has one game exclusive to PC
B) Had one game exclusive to PC, before a years later port to one console
C) Then obviously sells more on PC
I’d argue that TW3 alone’s sales are more representative (and having played all of the games, it is by far the best game out of the three) of a useful metric, and that suggests that most sales are on console.
It is obviously better on PC, and I will always advocate that people play everything they can on a PC, but I see a lot of peasantry in these comments.
I don’t think sales was really a factor. It’s just easier to aim for parity than optimizing for each platform. Still really lazy though.
😀
Worldview SHATTERED!!!
and with no drm
Sanctum 2 console sales didnt even justify the console version. Alan wake made its money back on day 1.
Fallout 4 sold over a million with day 1 piracy while uncracked games did not.
It is all about the demand and the quality of the pc version.
Don’t forget Diablo 3, Starcraft 2, and legacy of the void selling more than 1 million in 24-48 hours on the PC.
Tomb Raider on PC also sold 3 times what the Xbox One sold in the same time period. Anyone who still believe that nonsense is just either stupid or in denial.
Digital Sales only, though. So it isn’t such a big deal. Consoles are a lot more retail/physical copy oriented than the PC is.
Perfect.
sterben…
You know what would be interesting data? People that bought it twice, on console and PC.
Cant wait for Cyberpunk 2070 to be a consolized mess.
I think you might be off by about seven years.
Considering you got the name of the game wrong, I doubt you were interested in the game to begin with and were just trying to sound like a cynical smarta*s.
Don’t play Fallout 4 bro, Bethesda is disappointing.
Gameplay in Fallout 4 was much better than in W3, but story and dialogues for most part was dogshit.
The Red Baron questline is the greatest quest ever written and the DLC too.
CDPR saying Witcher sold more on PC means nothing when they already decided to make games for console first, and PC second. That wouldn’t be a problem, though, if we didn’t get mechanicaly shallower games because of said decision.
Release the 2nd DLC already so I can buy the game!
Congrats on missing out on all the times it already went on sale. Its not like you’ll even be able to play the dlc’s until your near the end of the story anyway so i suggest pick it up and start playing.
Money is irrelevant to me, I just want the whole package, not buy bits here and there.
The DLCs are standalone narratives, no connection whatsoever to the main game apart from Hearts of Stone sharing the base map and expanding it with new areas.
The DLCs are designed to be played after you’ve finished the main game and have a high level.
Cool, I’ll look forward to getting my hands on it all.
Just saying…it’ll take you like 200h to finish the main game + Hearts of Stone. Potentially longer if you take it slow and try to explore as much as possible as well as doing the collectible and treasure hunting stuff.
Blood and Wine will release before June so why not start playing now?
I just started playing Mad Max, so when I’m done with that I’ll be on the lookout for a new game. It looks so good in 4K, wasn’t expecting it to look that stunning.
Mad Max was such a disappointment to me…incredibly shallow and repetitive, mediocre story and overall weak characters. Copies the generic open world mechanics from Ubisoft games and a worse version of the Batman Arkham combat system.
I’ve only just started it, but man it’s beautiful, looks great on a 200″ screen.
another CDPR style PR . well i love CDPR and their PR stuff are harmless for the most part though as always so it’s okay. Witcher 1 is PC only and Witcher 2 is a PC first game so of course Witcher Franchise is doing better on PC specially since majority of console gamers didn’t care about Witcher prior to 2015.
Witcher 3 is a console friendly game though and the PC version didn’t manage to outsold the PS4 version sadly. (in the long run it will happen i assume). it still sold well on PC though and RPGs usually sell well on PC anyway (Dragon’s Dogma is the most recent example probably and it’s Capcom’s most successful PC release)
business-wise i understand why they went for a console friendly version and they really tried on PC before becoming console friendly, but also let’s not forget that in an age with lots of DRMs around, CDPR is releasing AAA DRM-free games. as long as they keep GoG up and improve it, we owe them.
“Witcher 2 is a PC first game ”
Meh not really. It is very consolized, the fact it has maps with corridors that are the only way to access other parts of the map screams console, not to mention the doors that only exist to load new areas.
Except Witcher 2 was released for Microsoft Windows on 17 May 2011 and for Xbox 360 on 17 April 2012.
Just a month shy of a whole year later it came out on consoles, with much lesser graphics to boot. That’s, by definition, PC first.
That’s true, but what matters is whether it was designed around PC or consoles. Morrowind was designed around PC, despite that it came out later on consoles. Witcher 2 was a console-friendly game to begin with, despite that it came out on PC first.
They had a much smaller team then and planned to release it on both last-gen consoles, but knew they had to work on them one at a time, and only ended up being able to do the 360 conversion.
That being said, there’s nothing in that game to me that indicates it was “designed around consoles.” Graphically it was very demanding on PC hardware and the change in mechanics over the first game seemed like a natural evolution of what they wanted to make.
Everything in this game was screaming that it was made for consoles.
Well, I never got that impression, so, sorry you feel that way. The only part that screamed “consoles” was that the keyboard controls were not the best they could have been. Everything else about the game was pretty up and current for a 2011 released title.
I assume day-one controller support and rolling fest combat didn’t raise your suspicion.
Controller support =/= “Made for consoles.” More peripheral choice is always a good thing. If that were true than flightsims with “controller support” in the 90s and early 2000s were also “made for consoles”
Everyone complains about the “roll fest” combat but I never had to resort to that nearly as much as everyone seems to make it out. And even so, the Combat Enhanced mod made by one of the developers using their own modkit (hey, mod support! That’s not “made for consoles”!) did a great deal to fix that too.
So no. I don’t see an additional feature and an accidental consequence of a not-perfect combat system as “screaming made for consoles.”
>Controller support =/= “Made for consoles.”
But of course it is. Why do think it was designed to be playable with gamepads? Just because they had some spare time? They even had to cut some areas in order to finish the game earlier. Flightsims aren’t designer around console gamepads. They are designed around joysticks and similar devices which somewhat resemble the real aircraft control system.
>Everyone complains about the “roll fest”
Because people don’t roll IRL sword fight. Witcher 1 combat was based on real combat techniques, while Witcher 2 was clearly based on the console Souls series roll fest.
>So no. I don’t see
Nothing personal, but that’s probably because you’re just another CDP / Witcher fanboy. I mean, even retarded would sum 2 and 2 at this point. Nothing good or bad about it, it’s just how it is.
>But of course it is. Why do think it was designed to be playable with gamepads? Just because they had some spare time?
They included super sampling as a graphical option that they knew no one’s machine would run well for at least a year or two in future hardware upgrades “just because they could.” Someone in development clearly thought their new system would handle well with analog controls. Some people *gasp* God forbid it, even prefer using controllers over KB+M on some PC games. So yes, it could very well have been about choice.
>They even had to cut some areas in order to finish the game earlier.
Again, much smaller team than most other large game devs at the time of Witcher 2 (their studio size doubled or even tripled after W2 for W3). They even gave some of this content back to us for free afterwards when they could have easily charged for it.
>They are designed around joysticks and similar devices which somewhat resemble the real aircraft control system.
Except they were also playable with just about *any* type of controller that would fit in the now-forsaken input port that those joysticks/controllers used to use. Including controllers that very similarly resembled console ones.
>Because people don’t roll IRL sword fight. Witcher 1 combat was based on real combat techniques, while Witcher 2 was clearly based on the console Souls series roll fest.
To say it was based on “real” combat techniques is a huge, huge falsehood. No real swordsman would pirouette like that with a broadsword fighting another swordsman either. There is still a huge amount of fantasy element and showmanship (which, could still be accurate – but is not a “combat technique”) still added in W1, and the most “realistic” part of their combat system was having to adapt your style (fast or strong) depending on the enemy type. The transition to a more active combat system (since *MANY* claimed W1’s combat was dull, which, it is) with large monsters made rolling to dodge a relative necessity, with the unintended side-effect of also making it the only really effective way of dealing with small monsters and sword opponents on hard difficulties as well. The added utility ability to increase roll distance only exacerbated the problem, because the game gave you no other options (W3’s sidestep was an excellent design compromise)
>Nothing personal
Actually everything about that last comment “screams” (see what I did there) personal. There’s nothing that necessitated a personal attack. I’m not a fanboy, I can admit the game had its flaws, but I can also recognize why the design of the game allowed for certain undesirable tendencies to occur.
It’s not a matter of “summing 2 and 2” because while movement and signs wheel may have been designed around a controller, the game’s inventory and other UI certainly was not, and was actually a prime complaint of people trying to play with a controller.
So, just because you didn’t like some of their flawed design decisions with the sequel, (Which is fine that you do) *it still doesn’t necessarily* indicate the game was “designed” for something it wasn’t even ported to for another year, after an already long development cycle for the sequel to begin with.
Even a retard can tell the difference between “flawed design” and actually “dumbed down for consoles.” And yes, that was personal.
I think you don’t quite understand how game development works, thus, some weird parallels, first with flying simulators, now with supersampling. SSAA is a common technique that doesn’t require any special work for a specific scene, and was probably implemented in the game engine long before.
To design a game around gamepads you need to do many things, including designing controls, combat, UI, etc. Most of the players on PC use KB+M, so no one will spend people and money resources on this if a game is a PC exclusive and isn’t meant for consoles. Simple logic.
Not a weird parallel when your initial argument was as basic as “because it had controllers and roll a lot.”
And the problem with your “simple logic” doesn’t explain away PC exclusives that have controller support
What kind of PC RPG was designed around a controller and has a combat full of rolls?
witcher 3 may not have sold as many as ps4 on pc but it def made just as much money thanks to the sales on gog and them taking full profit. its def a good split considering its on 3 platforms and it sold about 2 million on pc alone.
They make considerably less money from console sales.
On steam they make 70% profit and with GOG it’s 100%.
Console sales are probably something around 40% or less due to the licensing fees imposed by Microsoft and Sony as well as the costs for their physical publishers and distributors, Bandai Namco and Warner Bros.
I may be mistaken. but if you are talking about The Witcher franchise, that’s the 3 different games and The Witcher adventure game. So let’s see there’s The Witcher adventure game for PC only, The Witcher 1 only for aswell PC, The Witcher 2 came out on PC first, and a year later came out only for the Xbox 360 on a very downgraded version. Then The Witcher 3 that came out for the PC Xbox One and PS4 had recently shown numbers of the PC version sold around a third of the numbers. So unless loads of people just bought The Witcher 3 for PC recently, it is really OBVIOUS that The Witcher FRANCHISE will have still sold more on PC to this date, NOT that the Witcher 3 sold more on PC than on consoles.
Yeah, it’s typical PR speak, though I don’t know why they would want to s**t on the console community like that.
They are s**tting on the PC community, so why not s**t on the console community aswell? Some change of scenery
withccer 3 splits in profit are 70 percent pc 30 percent console. thats twice as much, if not a little over it on pc. 2 million sales on pc makes just as much money as 4 million on console, so i would say its a little bit more than a third of the sales in pc. they took fulll profit too on gog so i am assuming it made even more money. dont see whats wrong with what they are saying. ps4 may have sold more, but overall, the split was pretty even if you consider money made.
” the PC still holds strong. Most of The Witcher sales are for the PC, though consoles started selling very well. “
Haha…deal with it!
#goVEGAN #STEAM #GOG
I think Denuvo has something to do with that….oh wait !
DSO gone down to toilet? every post needs to be approved?
if you post trash
Testing
” though consoles started selling very well”
shots fired
Witcher franchise or Witcher 3? And if the Witcher 3 did sell more on consoles I want it cleared up.
The game looks better than it did at launch.
PC GAMING FTW!
I think I can hear a collective “no sh*t” from everyone all over the world.
so he says post numbers to prove it.i can show console numbers.he is full of it if he cant show numbers.
If one of the CEOs and co-founders of CDPR is saying this then he’s probably right.
Unlike some illiterate internet troll who doesn’t have all the information.
show numbers i can show vg charts showing consoles dominating pc sales and thst doesnt include digital sales.the game actually sold low on x1 but sp4 did 4m and x1 did 1m.thats 5m in sales on consoles that doesnt include digital sales.
i call him out to show sales.
vgcharts…
You’re a moron.
at least it shows some numbers. like i said before he can show sales other wise he is full of it.
He has all the incentives in the world to do the opposite and bolster consoles.
It’s been quite a few months since their sales report so maybe there will be a new one for this quarter or the next one. Likely around the release of the next DLC.
then post the sales numbers just do say it.until then he is full of it.
Telling the CEO of CDPR that he’s full of it when he’s the one who has the full financial information of the company he co-founded and runs?
They can’t release financial reports at any time they want.
show sales numbers or go home.
PC sold more digital copies, no one said physical.
No, what was said is:
> Tomb Raider on PC also sold 3 times what the Xbox One sold in the same time period.
Doesn’t that sound to you like he meant OVERALL sales rather than just digital sales? It’s obvious the guy I replied to either overlooked or ignored the fact that Squeenix was talking about digital-only.
In reality, Tomb Raider still sold a little better on Xbone in its opening month, provided my numbers are correct.
The fact is though a couple steam sales later and PC will dominate.
The Console scrubs will buy used or borrow discs from friends.
Pc Gamers keepin it real!
Go on piratebay, search for Witcher 3 and you can find several thousand people up- and downloading TW3 at this very moment. No doubt tens or hundreds of thousands have done so since the game came out. They be keepin’ it real!
Seriously though – don’t be so tribal. PC gamers aren’t all based bros and console gamers aren’t all penny pinchers. We’re all gamers from different places and circumstances.
I find this hard to believe to be honest.
Not gonna deny they did and anyone who says otherwise is just plain biased…BUT…everything else from gameplay to interesting main story and side-quests, intriguing and well developed characters and enemies…huge and just gorgeous world to explore, the overall longevity of the game …all of that imho simply overshadows the graphical downgrade.
Hands down a true (and rare) gem of the openworld fantasy RPG genre.
Don’t forget the windows store sales even though they most likely amount to probably 5% of steam sales.
I also would not rely on vgchartz for accurate information about sales data. Was there even a physical release for Rise of the Tomb Raider on PC?
Well, it’s quite simply the best numbers I have. They might not be correct but even if they’re remotely accurate, the statement that TR sold 3x better on PC is already debunked.
True, there is no guarantee for VG’s accuracy. Fortunately, in this case it doesn’t matter much. The “3x as many sales on PC” thing is bogus even if VG’s numbers are off by 50% or more.
I’d imagine that VG only lists “recorded” sales and that some outlets might not be listed – many smaller ones, for example. In The Witcher 3’s case the game part of Nvidia’s promotions which may have counted towards physical sales but weren’t picked up by VG’s system (after all, a box with a steam code in it also counts as phyiscal). But that’s pure conjecture.
The main reason why I brought up the sales stuff anyways is because I got annoyed by someone not reading past the headline of an article and then feeling smug about something he’s plain wrong about 😛
he’s talking about the entire franchise? if so thanks Sherlock the game started as PC exclusive then the 2nd come out and it was PC and 360 and the 3rd come out and this time was released on PC, PS4 and XBOX one, as you can see most of the witcher games has been released on PC…
I didn’t know the Witcher 1 and 2 was on ALL PLATFORMS.
2 important things here to consider:
1- PC games sell for a far longer time than console games. On consoles, sales peak on the first and maybe second month, and then fall down abruptly. PC games, however, sell steadily over a much, much longer period of time.
2- You make more money on PC gaming than on consoles per unit sold.
Also the fact the profits made from 1 digital copy sold equal 2x to 3x the profits made on a physical copy.
So 550k digital copies is worth the same as about 1,2 million physical copies sold, when it comes to profits made.
Everyone knows the developers and publishers get a bigger cut when a game is sold digital.
Any source on these numbers other than “everyone knows”? Because Valve pockets 30% of the price if you sell through Steam – which these 550k copies went through.
I find it hard to believe that they’d still make 2-3 times as much money off a digital copy, especially after Valve takes their slice of the cake.
(Either way- I’ve only talked about number of units sold – not profit or revenue.)
if that were the case, why are you making note of physical vs digital?
a sale is a sale. and even RotTR via steam is sold at $60 base price on steam. everything else is a discount.
Because the guy said “RottR sold 3x better on PC” which is not true as far as we know. It sold 3x more copies *digitally*. But if you count *all* the sales it paints a different picture.
That’s what I did. I grabbed the digital sales data from Steamspy and the physical sales data from VGCharts for both the PC and Xbone and added them up.
As you said, a sale is a sale. Proclaiming that one platform sells better than another by conveniently leaving out a significant portion of the other platform’s sales is ignorant at the least and intentionally misleading at worst.
Definitely!
The only reason Microsoft is bringing exclusives to PC now is because they aren’t selling well on Xbox.
OMG DSOG… “PC market is still strong IN POLAND. Most of The Witcher sales are for the PC” – he is talking about POLAND guys, POLAND, NOT WHOLE WORLD.
540k sold on Steam… Acting as if Steam is the only place PC games are sold… Remember GoG… Over 1 million The Witcher 3 digital copies were sold on GoG, so you would be silly to think GoG did not also sell close to 550k as well.
This is about Return of the Tomb Raider. RottR is not sold on GOG…
digital sales are pure profit for inhome studios; Microsoft=Fable, CDPR=Witcher. everyone has to pay for shipping, physical disks, labor, etc.
Not pure profit. Valve takes about 30% of the sale price as compensation for offering the game on Steam. Other digital content platforms probably take similar rates.
Even if the publisher/dev owns a content distribution platform by themselves (like Windows Store or GOG), chances are that the game sells a lot better on Steam anyways (with some exceptions, of course). So even for Microsoft publishing Return of the Tomb Raider on the Windows Store, they still end up giving 30% of most of their sales to Valve.
“IN POLAND” is the key expression missing in the subtitles. He is talking about the Polish market exclusively, which is pretty darn obvious from the context anyway. Plz pull this bullsh*t story
Nonsense that you pull out of your a*s in no way constitute a “fact”.
Were Witcher 2 and 3 not enough proof?
Of dumbing down? No, unless you think “proof” means “I hallucinated it, therefore it is so”.
But but but I can bet that even Witcher 3 will sell better on Consoles otherwise I’ll delete my account ( said some fanboys ).
Anyway,,,it’s hardly a surprise. And from the very first moment, we stated that PC version will surpass Consoles because Console sales are mostly front loaded.
The other reason is that most of the fans of the Witcher franchise are on
PC, since it originated on PC and Witcher 3 is the only one that released simultaneously on all platforms.
Games like these also sell better on PC, while blockbusters like COD and stuff sell better on Consoles. Bubububut Denuvo.
The so-called board game’s name isn’t Cyberpunk 2070 either. Please stop trying and take the game off your “radar”. It will benefit you greatly since it will obviously be “dumbed down” as per your high standards.
too bad most PC gamers failed to see this is a console game. the menus/UI and game is best played using a controller. the nightmare of crafting on the scroll list UIs are so invasive. CDPR hit the parity on PC gamers not only the menus/UI but even the patch needs parity. i didn’t see bethesda/ubisoft or other publishers doing that nonsense. it’s VERY obvious CDPR has went for parity on patch release. all their patches now will release simulatenously on all platforms. CDPR has lost me and i don’t freaking buy their lies anymore.
Such a mistake is not so simple when you’re focused on bashing something you’re clueless about, especially since you claim you like cyberpunk. But I digress; I’m happy console players get to play it as well. I’ll play it on PC and a console release won’t diminish my enjoyment of the game at all. I suggest you keep an open mind.
Witcher as a whole or just Witcher 3?
Odd; if you’re talking about technical potential, then consoles are low-end PCs. Similarly, someone running a mid-range system doesn’t have the same “potential” as someone running a high-end one. And someone running a high-end system doesn’t have the same potential as someone running a bleeding-edge one. Do you see how hard it would be to develop a game when you consider technical potential as a deciding factor? Multiplatform games always base their “potential” on the lowest common denominator, and rightly so. Exclusivity sucks for the industry and for gamers, like it or not. Losing some “potential” in terms of graphical fidelity is a fair compromise in order to allow developers to make the game they want to and be able to reach a larger audience.
Also, I wish you wouldn’t edit your previous comments after I’ve already responded to them. And if you must, please mention it as an addendum instead of doing ninja edits and making my responses seem incongruous. It’s basic internet etiquette.
Of course, I admit “consolization” is a thing in the same manner anything but bleeding-edge hardware is also a “thing” when it comes to the lowest common denominator. That’s the nature of technology… not everyone runs the latest and greatest.
Now coming to the other more pertinent issue… the input factor. This is a valid criticism, and I believe the developers bear the responsibility to adapt the UI and movement etc. based on the input method. Consoles themselves aren’t to blame for this. As an example let me cite Deus Ex: Human Revolution, where the PC version had a specific UI tailored for KB+M, thanks to the good work done by Nixxes. If more developers follow this lead, it won’t be much of an issue.
Now, bigger areas. Usually bigger areas means larger memory requirements for the target hardware. In this regard I think both the current-gen consoles have decent amounts of memory on par with lower-end PCs. It’s a fair bargain for the price you pay. I do not believe simply being a console has anything to do with it, since a lot of PCs also exist that have lower memory specifications than consoles. In other words, lower memory is a thing with not just consoles, but PCs and sometimes even mobile computers as well. That’s how the hardware industry is set up. If you look at things around 25 years ago, PCs had 4MB of RAM and were not as capable as gaming consoles. I don’t think the consoles suffered simply because such PCs existed back then.
Now the accusation that you do ninja edits. When I replied to your second to last comment, I specifically recall you didn’t put any pictures in it. While replying to your last comment I found you added that picture along with a bunch of extra text that I hadn’t seen when replying previously.. If you had put them up along with some sort of indication that you had made an edit, I would have edited my response as well. Otherwise it creates confusion when browsing this thread later because I need to frequently consult previous comments to remind myself of the context when I return to this discussion.
I did, and unlike you, I wasn’t stoned all the while.
So you were drunk?
Possibly… still, I obviously got sober. Maybe you will too, some day.
Might as well be. No issues then.