Cyberpunk 2077 has achieved a significant sales milestone but the numbers still pale against its original forecast and what sales could have been.
Taking to Twitter earlier today to announce its full-year financial results, publisher CD Projekt confirmed that Cyberpunk 2077 sold more than 18 million copies worldwide across all supported platforms by December 31, 2021.
— CD PROJEKT IR (@CDPROJEKTRED_IR) April 14, 2022
Cyberpunk 2077 sold 13.7 million copies (including pre-orders) within the first month of its release in December 2020. The game hence managed to sell only about 4.3 million copies throughout 2021.
That comes to about a 68 percent drop in sales following the nightmare and class-action lawsuits developer CD Projekt Red faced for releasing the game in a nearly unplayable state on previous-generation consoles.
It should be noted that Cyberpunk 2077 was projected to sell at least 30 million copies within its first year. 18 million is barely half of that forecast.
Cyberpunk 2077 is now being predicted by analysts (via Bloomberg) to sell another 5.6 million copies in 2022. The increased sales will be courtesy of a series of patches that have stabilized the game alongside the new next-generation versions on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles.
That, however, will still not be enough to reach the 30-million figure by the end of 2022. CD Projekt will have to wait until 2023 to meet that goal.
Cyberpunk 2077 is now available on all major platforms. There are still people out there who pre-ordered but could never find themselves playing the game even after CD Projekt Red began to roll out fixes. While the Witcher makers still have a long road of themselves to earn back the trust they lost, it must be stated that Cyberpunk 2077 is in a much better state than it was at launch.
