Thronebreaker Sales Below CDPR’s Expectations
Aidan O'Brien
Thronebreaker, the game based on a mini-game from another game, hasn’t sold as well as CD Projekt Red had hoped. The title, based on the Gwent card game from the third installment of the highly successful Witcher franchise, released exclusively on Good Old Games. This, it appears, may not have been the best move.
The game appealed to the community, which drove up our expectations regarding sales. Unfortunately, as yet, these expectations have not been fulfilled.
Going with platform exclusivity for Thronebreaker, even on a platform you own, was always an interesting gamble for CDPR. On the one hand, you potentially limit the overall amount of sales the product will make in its initial release window. On the other hand, you can hope that good reviews, which Thronebreaker has received, would entice people on to the platform. That doesn’t appear to have happened in this case.
The game appeared on GOG first for fairly straightforward reasons: GOG is our priority platform and we wanted to release the game there first to gamers who support us there; however the reach of GOG is incomparably smaller than that of Steam. We know that there’s a large Witcher fan community on Steam and that’s why we also released the game there.
Since Thronebreaker was released on Steam, it is once again reviewing exceptionally well, with people very much enjoying what the title has to offer. Hopefully, more people will pick it up. It should be noted, CDPR does not consider Thronebreaker to be a financial failure, merely that they allowed their expectations to grow too high due to the popularity of the games that it draws from. According to the earnings call that this news broke from, CDPR is also expecting that bringing the game to consoles will help to bump its overall sales numbers and that they still have a lot of faith in the title.
Thronebreaker is available to purchase on Steam, and GoG, right now.
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