Cyberpunk has sold 20M copies

Thoughts? The bad press definitely shot its legs in my opinion. 20M is great but we're talking about a game that sold 13M copies in 10 days so it only sold an additional 7M copies in almost two years. It sold 2M copies since the middle of April.

For comparison's sake, Elden Ring took about a month to reach 13.3M copies and by the end of June was at 16.6M. It will likely end up outselling Cyberpunk by a significant amount and will overtake it very soon despite coming out more than a year later. Cyberpunk would have coasted to 25M by now if it weren't for the terrible reception.

I never played it until receiving it for christmas for my series X. And it played fine. Ive enjoyed it and look forward to playing it some more. Thank you CDPR and remember folks NO DUDEBRO, JAPANIMEEEEE GOOOOO

You played it on a solid console after it was fixed so you were fine. Those who suffered were the ones on last-gen consoles, especially during the first few months.

At the end of the day, it is a good game on PC and next-gen consoles. So, it is not surprising that it has sold so many copies. It should have been delayed though and the last-gen version should have been scrapped altogether.

Didn't buy it, very obviously a sham if you had played their previous titles.

Gamers being gamers, and media being media, CDP told them to dance, and they have done the waltz. They have shaken their hips.

Very sad.

The press isn't to blame, they were telling consumers the truth about a faulty, broken product. I consider that to be a win for the consumer.

The press hyped this prior to ungodly amounts to the point it was expected to be an cultural event.

Credit to the brave large breasted girl that left Gamespot to work with Nintendo, she called a spade a spade. And in typical fashion, gamers harassed her without activating a single brain cell.

Real hero. Big breasts as well.

Yeah it's not like the developer themselves contributed to the hype with a well established actor or anything...it's all the press to blame.

Yeah...no. The press actually hyped it to high heavens before its public release. Getting rave reviews everywhere, hence the reason it sold 13M so quickly. It was later when the public found out how broken the game was that only the press changed their tone.

That's not really what I argued though. Said many times CDP are masters of their own propaganda.

Right down to the first Witcher game, which is actually terrible. They used the "pc game for pc gamers" schtick and it worked wonders. Even with Witcher 2 which plays more like a console game.

The media work in tandem, they are buddy buddy, desperate for clicks and ad revenue.

Before this game was released it was portrayed as a winner. And people on mass took it as such.

Most egregious example is Call Of Duty. The review itself actually doesn't matter too much as a Gamespot in particular, will just flood the front-page with frivolous articles to the point almost the entirety of the page is essentially one big advert.

And that's no exaggeration. They've done this multiple times now.

I'll be honest, I had never even heard of CDPR before The Witcher 3. I've never owned a gaming PC.

I am sure the publishers/developers pay big money to sites like IGN, GameSpot to advertise their games on the front page like that. It's all connected. It is shady.

The lesson here, folks, is don't pre-order your games.

First off: why? Why pre-order? Is there even any incentive any more?

Second, it's not so much that Cyberpunk was a bad game, it's just they had all those pre-orders placed before quality control was even finished and as a result they felt a need to deliver something as some sort of compliance to their shareholders than to deliver a quality product to their customers.

We boosted their shares with the preorders and, given how corporations work, they therefore would do anything to keep those shares high.

Also, not to defend CDPR too much, but they had a couple things working against them: the developed the game for multiple generations of platforms, and they entered the final (arguably most critical part) stage of development during COVID.

*Obviously just my opinion based on what I've read and heard about it.

These numbers still blow me away. I remember when a decent game selling 3 million was pretty good, and CoD selling 7-10 was insane! The budgets were obviously smaller back then, but it still seems crazy to me.

@uninspiredcup: The comments section on the Cyberpunk review is a pretty funny thing to read now.

@judaspete: Some of the stuff do get. If follow her reviews they can be pretty meme'y.

Prob one of those types of journos that hangs around Resetera so her particular comment about not wanting to help the cops is pretty cringe.

Shit like that is a write-off for me, personally. As I love fascism.

It's worth noting that millions of copies were returned. So the net sales is a lot less than 20M units, probably closer to 15M units. But still, that's a lot of sales either way, even if its sales potential could've been a lot higher.

The market is a lot bigger today than it was back in the days. There are a number of reasons why:

• World population has grown by a few billions over the last couple of decades.
• World GDP growth has outpaced world population growth several fold, which means a lot more disposable income.
• Games were more expensive in the past (with inflation), but are now more affordable compared to before.
• Video games have become more socially acceptable in mainstream popular culture.
• Many more markets are buying games now, whereas before it was mainly just Japan, North America and Western Europe.
• The core Millennial demographic were kids and teens back then, but now they're adults with plenty of disposable income.
• An entire new generation of younger Gen Z gamers have come of age and are also contributing to the game industry.

Add up all these factors, and it's easy to see why games today sell a lot more than they did in the past.

I remember that review and the backlash from brainless fanboy sheep:

Cyberpunk 2077 Review

Kallie Plagge was the heroine we needed, but didn't deserve.

A returned product is no longer a sale. They most likely have the total sales corrected to account for the returns.

A returned product is no longer a net sale, but still counts as a gross sale. They didn't specify whether the 20M figure is net or gross, but it's safe to assume it's gross sales, as that's better PR.

It was worth the $20 I spent

Millions? Kinda doubt the number is that high.

Part of it was the absolute bottom feeding parasite of a human-being The Quartering who basically publishes rage bait for incels then denies culpability when he encourages his brain-dead "i'm not racist but", video watchers to go harass X, Y and Z.

Also her breasts were pretty massive so def white knighting.

Just a month after it released:

Nearly 2 Million Copies Of 'Cyberpunk 2077' Have Been Refunded

Its total refunds would be even higher than that.

Never watched The Quartering, and would never want to either. It's funny how these incels complain about cancel culture, but then proceed to engage in the same cancel culture when it's someone they disagree with. They behave just like the SJWs they complain about.

Also her breasts were pretty massive so def white knighting.

Simp.

@Jag85: This is true. They are probably more insufferable than those pink haired Resetera type freaks at this point.

I wish I could just go back to the 90's and stay there. I hate modern times. It sucks.

And 13m got it refunded.

The source for the number is a community poll done on youtube. Not exactly reliable.

I dislike games media as much as the next guy. But this YouTube and Twitter nonsense, and the fact that they’re being cited as sources now is a low I NEVER imagined. I would kill for the disinformation/misinformation of games journalism from 2007-2013 over what we have now. At least they loosely played by the standards..

@uninspiredcup: she quit because of that review? Yeah that was awful how people reacted to her sobering assessment of the game (heck in hindsight I'd dare say she was overly generous in her score), but she was practically vindicated almost immediately.

@Juub1990: I played it for 3 hours and gave up it was soooooooo boring!

My God, how do people play games like that? 3 hours of "30 seconds of action, 5 minutes of CGI". Ugh! What a waste of money.

@lamprey263: Na think just got a job offer from Nintendo and jumped ship.

Get the impression a lot of game journos consider sites like this just a jumping point to what they actually want to do.

It doesn’t help that these sites pay like it’s a first job out of college kind of gig. Most of the peak GiantBomb staff are now making more money while streaming to a couple hundred viewers on Twitch.

Truly despicable.

I suppose the question now is will gamers eventually stop buying games based on hype, or with their brains?

Wait, I don't know why I bother lol....

The source is an estimate from this YouTuber:

If you want official numbers, then there's this:

Cyberpunk 2077 Refunds Cost CDPR $51 Million

CDPR lost $51M in refunds during December 2020, within weeks of the game's release. That translates to roughly ~1M units refunded in December alone. Add in refunds made the next month, then nearly 2M units refunded is a fairly close estimate for the time period.

@Jag85: I don't disagree, but I keep hearing this narrative that console sales are relatively the same as they've been for years. More people, but the same amount of consoles are being sold. At least that's what I've heard. Could be nonsense, and of course PC is a big portion of the increased game sales.

That's a lot more sensible than Youtube polls. 2M range is possible. Doubt it's 5M as the initial backlash was what killed the game's momentum. We're probably looking at 17M sold in total which is pretty bad considering they were off to a blazing start with 13M sold in 10 days.

I also should point out the game was taken off on PSN for months until CDPR release patches until the game was fix for PS4, so that does play a factor as to how CP2077 reach 20 million sold.

Speaking for myself, I got it on GoG day one and no problems for the PC version and I only encounter rare bugs/glitches so no complains on my end. Plus, the Anime gave this series a boost from good word of mouth.

The real question is, will gamers trust CDPR again on their new Witcher game?

It's a shame about all the bad press (well-deserved on the last-gen consoles). The game was actually really good when it released on PC.

I think people will eventually jump off the bandwagon, give it a try, and appreciate it for the solid Deus Ex-like that it is.

Damn,sales fanboys who think cyberpunk was shit must be having sleepless nights,I mean they recon sales = quality

I'm a proud non-buyer of CP2077. And the company made sure I will never buy a product from them ever again.

The only lessons that will be learned from this are the wrong ones.

Good on CD Projekt Red for eventually fixing the shit they released but the idea that it's all okay cause the PC version was good at launch (if your system was good enough) and it did alright performance wise on next generation hardware is a fucking joke and exactly why this kinda crap keeps happening. The short term losses are fine cause the long term gains will outweigh because gamers have the attention span of a fucking gold fish and the mentality of "well they aren't shitting in my bed yet so this is fine."

Now let's talk about how many of those copies were $5 or heavily discounted because the game was so bad companies like Sony didn't even wanna sell it after being all in on the marketing hype.

And for the fanboys who fall into the above group of being fine cause the shitting isn't happening in their bed the game was delisted for months from PSN because it was a broken pile of shit that even Sony knew they couldn't sell in good conscious. You are firmly okay with companies shitting in someone else's bed if it means you get an okay product.

Incredible numbers for such a mediocre game.

I’m waiting for the next gen physical versions with all the dlc included. If the game was in a better state at launch, I could see it selling close to 30M by now.

GamePass with all DLC or bust!! ;o

lol :P

I bought mine for $7.99.

I actually think this is still a very poor review.

She missed the point about Night City and the entire narrative.

I'm going to play it one of these days.

I bought it at release and was one of the ones that got a refund. I think I will get it again. But it sucks because the game is $59.99 digital, and $29.99 physical. I only do digital. Oh well.