The Witcher/The Witcher 2 Enhanced Edition Interview

Forbes had the chance to talk with CD Projekt RED’s CEO Marcin IwiÅ„ski on various subjects, with a sizable part of the questions dealing with The Witcher franchise: its commercial results, why a customer could be interested in it, why choices and consequences are important for the titles. Here’s a snip on sales:

Speaking of The Witcher* has the affection for the games in the PC gaming community, in particular, been reflected in sales. In particular, how have sales performed in Russia, a market many western publishers have simply given up on due to perceptions of rampant piracy? Sales of the Witcher games seem to lend the lie to that assessment what is the secret to holding up sales in Eastern Europe and Russia?

The Witcher (PC) sold 2.1 million to date and The Witcher 2 (PC) sold 1.1m both numbers are for the end of 2011, and both games are selling well. In the case of The Witcher, we have just released a Mac version, so there are a lot of new sales happening, and this has also reinvigorated the PC version. With the release of the Enhanced Edition for PC and Xbox 360, The Witcher 2 still has quite a bright future and lots of units ahead.

Both The Witcher and The Witcher 2 sold very well in Russia and Poland and, yes, both countries can seem hopeless due to high piracy and lower income than in Western Europe or the US. It was easier for us, as first of all [Andrzej] Sapkowski is really well known all across Eastern Europe and the books really helped to sell the game on our home turf. However, this would never get us to such sales levels both games were bestsellers in the years of release. In Poland we have set an industry record, becoming the #1 all-time seller. How is it possible? We prepare the right offer.

The price and content of the retail box is unbeatable value for money, and we marketed it this way: that it’s a must have. Especially in Poland, but I think to a large extent in Russia as well, it was embarrassing for serious gamers not to have the Witcher games in their collection legitimately. Whenever I travel across the region and I met people, lots of them have at least one of the Witchers, but quite often I meet people who have several editions, just because they liked the game so much. It will takes us a while to get to this level in US or UK, but I have no doubt we will get there. We have created one of the best RPG series, so the sky is the limit!

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So much for PC sales. How about this first foray into the console world?

Of course, by releasing the Enhanced Edition we are looking for a significant increase of sales in particular on the Xbox 360 in the key territories for us: North America and most of the western European countries. Our goal is to exceed a million units sold on Xbox 360 within the first 12 months from release. Looking at the initial results of 500k+ shipped worldwide and over 250k sold-through in just the first week, it seems reasonable. The manufacturing of additional units has just been started in both in the US and Western Europe.