CD Projekt, the Polish firm behind The Witcher games and Cyberpunk 2077, has just reached a remarkable milestone. It's now officially the most valuable video game company in Europe, with a market capitalisation of $8.13 billion. This comes just as The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (the company's most successful game by far) reaches its fifth birthday. Not a bad way to celebrate.
According to VGC, this puts CD Projekt ahead of Ubisoft, which currently boasts a market valuation of $8.12 billion. Of course, with a new Assassin's Creed game on the horizon and talk of an incredibly ambitious lineup over the next few months, the pendulum could easily swing back in Ubisoft's favour.
Then again, CD Projekt is releasing Cyberpunk 2077 in September, which is easily one of the most anticipated games of the last several years.
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Still, both CD Projekt and Ubisoft are some way off a number of larger gaming companies out there. Rockstar parent company Take-Two is currently valued at $16.13 billion. Ultimate Team peddler EA boasts $34.4 billion. Nintendo? $53.73 billion. Then there's Call Of Duty owner Activision Blizzard, rocking a cool $56.27 billion. I can't begin to imagine what that much money looks like. Hell, I can't even remember the last time I saw a £20 note.
It's also worth pointing out that the likes of Microsoft and Sony have higher values, but there's also much more to what they do. Still, it's no surprise to see CD Projekt smashing it, especially thanks to the popularity of a certain witcher.
In fact, 2019 actually saw The Witcher 3 sell nearly as well as did in 2015, when it launched. According to a report from last month, sales of the popular RPG were around 7 million last year, compared to 9.5 million in 2015. That's effortlessly the best 12 months the game has had since it first released. It's also doubly impressive for a single-player game that hasn't had any new content to speak of since 2016.
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Much of this recent success for The Witcher 3 likely comes down to the Netflix show, which aired towards the end of last year. Around this period, it was actually reported that there were more gamers playing The Witcher 3 on Steam than there were the day it launched.
I'm not saying Henry Cavill was entirely responsible for this, but I suspect Ubisoft might start thinking about giving him a call to see if he wants to play Rayman in a gritty live-action adaptation.
Featured Image Credit: CD ProjektTopics: Ubisoft, The Witcher 3, Cyberpunk 2077, CD Projekt Red