CD Projekt RED entered the big leagues with the launch of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt earlier this generation, which is widely regarded as one of the best games ever made. Their next game was always going to have a lot of eyes on it, no matter what. And indeed, it seems like the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 is attracting a lot more attention at this stage in its marketing cycle than The Witcher 3 was.
Speaking to investors in a financial call, the studio’s joint-CEO Adam Kiciński said that both videos for Cyberpunk 2077 uploaded by CD Projekt RED to their social media channels this year have done far better than The Witcher 3’s early trailers had.
“We are comparing apples and apples here: you are witnessing the activity on our own YouTube channel in the first four post-release weeks,” Kicinski said. “The six yellow bars on the left represent six of our most popular videos promoting The Witcher 3, published between the game’s announcement and ultimate release. The two bluish bars on the right correspond to the two initial – well, maybe not initial since the first-ever Cyberpunk 2077 trailer was released some years ago – but this year we released two new trailers showcasing our upcoming release. The first of those appeared at the end of the second quarter, while the 48-minute gameplay trailer was released this August. As you can see, interest in Cyberpunk 2077, or at least in its trailers, is many times greater than in the case of The Witcher.
“Of course I do not encourage you to draw far-reaching conclusions; however at this early stage of the campaign the most important question from our perspective was whether Cyberpunk – the new IP we’re introducing to the market – will take hold, whether it will be as well received as we would expect, at least in terms of attracting gamer interest. These viewership figures answer our initial question in the positive: gamers are indeed interested in Cyberpunk 2077 and are eagerly awaiting its release. Of course, the bulk of the campaign still lies ahead. This is merely the beginning; the game has to be completed and there’s a lot of development work in store. We are, however, convinced, that this product has the potential to meet our expectations.”
As noted here, it is still early days. As also pointed out above, given that CD Projekt RED was relatively unknown when The Witcher 3 was not yet out, and now they are one of the most prominent developers in the industry, naturally Cyberpunk 2077 was going to have more attention from the get go. CD Projekt RED has a lot of goodwill right now—now it’s on them to actually leverage it by putting out a great game.