Cyberpunk 2077 is just two weeks away from its global launch now. It will be the first major title that Polish developer CD Projekt Red is releasing in five years since the release of The Witcher 3. This week marked the third-quarter earnings call for CD Projekt, where shareholders were given the opportunity to ask questions regarding their ongoing projects and general situation. Previously, The Direct reported on details regarding the upcoming reveal of Cyberpunk 2077 's post-launch content and multiplayer given during the investor's call.
NEWS
In further details from this translated earnings call , CD Projekt Red CFO Piotr Nielubowicz revealed some interesting statistics regarding the pre-sales for their upcoming blockbuster release, which is finally set to come out next month after numerous delays:
“First, the expected ratio between digital and physical on our sales, as we see it on preorders digital is very strong, so definitely we are more into moving potential split digital/physical, and more on the digital side. How far we'll go? We, honestly speaking, do not know, definitely farther than we had on the Witcher 3 and definitely more than 50% should come from the digital channel. “
When asked regarding how pre-order sales were going so far, Adam Kiciński declined to offer specifics, however, he said “we are really happy” about it:
"We are really happy about the preorder level right now is visibly higher than anything we had shipped on The Witcher and it keeps increasing at the expected pace comparing to The Witcher sales, historically."
WHAT THIS MEANS
Given the title being compared here for digital sales is The Witcher 3 (a now 5-year-old title), it's no surprise to see the split of pre-sales is leaning more towards digital this time around. Based on the digital sales statistics posted by Sony and Microsoft regularly, there is a clear trend of digital sales seeing a consistent increase, and more customers continue to leave discs behind.
There is a huge multitude of reasons behind this, the most obvious of which is the ability to pre-load, allowing access to the title as soon as it is released without the need to wait for any installations. It's clear the key console makers are seeing this trend loud and clear as both have released cheaper disc-free models of their latest devices (PS5 Digital Edition and Xbox One S), both of which have sold out from release.
Generally, for pre-orders, it is extremely common to see a higher split in favor of digital due to the minimal benefits provided by pre-ordering a physical game. It is likely physical orders will see a huge spike on release day as the highly anticipated title hits floors.
Cyberpunk 2077 is set to release December 10 on PS4, Xbox One, and PC, but will be playable on next-gen consoles via backward compatibility with further graphical support updates to come in early 2021.