Despite releasing back in 2015, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is continuing to do absolute bits for CD Projekt RED. The open world RPG was a critical and commercial darling, but Geralt's final video game outing is picking up steam once again thanks to the success of the recently-released Netflix show.
As reported by PC Games Insider, analysts at The NPD Group claim that The Witcher 3 has enjoyed an incredible 554% spike in sales for physical editions of the game on all platforms. That's for December 2019 compared to December 2018. Obviously, there's a connection between this newfound popularity and Netflix's The Witcher, which came out in December last year.
Clearly people saw Henry Cavill's Geralt having a nice soak in the tub and wondered if there was a way they could get in on that action. More developers and publishers obviously need to start using Cavill to promote some of their older games, because the numbers speak for themselves.
We've known for some time that the Netflix show provided a heck of a boost to its video game counterpart, though the full extent of said boost wasn't really known until now. Late last year, just after most people finished the series, it was reported that there were people playing The Witcher 3 on Steam than there were when the game was released.
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I mean, yeah... it also probably helps that you can get The Witcher 3 on Steam for less than a tenner if it's on sale these days, which it often is. Regardless, it's still impressive that it managed to beat its own record, and stands as a real testament to the popularity of the Netflix show. It clearly left enough of an impression that folk were keen to dive deeper into Geralt's world once it was over.
Unsurprisingly, Andrzej Sapkowski's original books have also enjoyed an increase in demand. More than 500,000 new copies of his Witcher stories have been reprinted as a new wave of fans greedily gobble up every last scrap of Witchery goodness they can get their hands on.
With all this going on, it won't come as much of a shock to anyone who doesn't already know that work on season two of The Witcher is already underway. On top of the new series, which starts filming this month, we're also getting an animated spinoff movie that should bridge the gap between the two seasons. It's a good time to be a fan of The Witcher, that's for sure.
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Featured Image Credit: Netflix/CD Projekt RED
Topics: The Witcher, CD Projekt Red