It started out as a humble adaptation of some relatively unknown fantasy books. Now, The Witcher is a giant in the world of video games.
In 2007, The Witcher was released, a then ambitious Western RPG made by the unknown CD Projekt Red with its first game. That story sounds like something that we don't believe today, but it was like that. Today they can celebrate being in the pantheon of video games and being one of the most successful recent franchises.
From niche books to mass super-text
CD Projekt RED can happily celebrate that its The Witcher series has already sold 50 million copies between all its versions. It is very accurate to say that their success came with the second installment, Assassin of Kings when they were able to port it to Xbox 360 and thus reach the public of consoles that they would not have achieved if they only made games for PC.
From there they already released The Witcher III: Wild Hunt, their most successful title by far and that has sold 28 million copies. That game is easily responsible for more than half the success of the franchise. Hence, they later released the card game Gwent, the Netflix series, and now one of the most anticipated titles of this generation has been Cyberpunk 2077.
The most curious thing is that not even the creator of the original Witcher story believed it would sell so well. He was content to grant the rights for its use after a one-time payment because he didn't think anyone would play video games based on a fantasy saga that hadn't exactly stirred great passion among readers. But he was wrong and decided to ask for money from direct sales after seeing the success the Polish developers have achieved.
It doesn't seem like there is going to be a new main game in the near future, but we can always look forward to the second, third and fourth seasons of the Netflix series, which is one of the platform's biggest hits last year.
Source: Go Nintendo
