Really great news, and a little expected one
I was skimming through the Switch 2 event and there wasn't too many competing candidates for launch titles that would sell well (except the Souls FromSoftware game), which is very good for 3rd parties... and a little strange, coming from Nintendo, who released Switch 1 with Breath of the Wild (technically it also came to Wii U I think month prior) and Mario Odyssey.
Those who already haven't played through Zelda before would probably buy that as launch title... but besides that I didn't see anything to be too excited about. No new Smash Bros, no 3D Mario, no Zelda.
My guess is that they're waiting Christmas to sell the console again, this time with the bundle with newer Mario game.
I heard that Mario Kart is often the most sold out game of the console.
Looking at the Switch 1: 150.8 million consoles sold in end of 2024, while Mario Kart sold 67.4 million copies.
Considering that Zelda was one of their launch titles, it sold 32.6 million copies. Probably as usual those sales came from launch (+marketing) so 16.3 million.
Considering that most people buying the console would be those who either didn't have Switch 1 (skipping generation) or already had Switch 1, the likelyhood of people waiting to play Breath of the Wild in better graphics is probably not the contender of top sales.
So I think there's very high likelyhood, due to the increased performance of the system, and lack of decent games being released in past year, it's possible that Cyberpunk could be getting 10 million sales in launch alone.
Something notable is that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Complete Edition sold Over 5 million copies in launch month. 5 million is probably good estimate for most popular 3rd party game sales for the console of lifetime. Cyberpunk sold 13 million copies in it's initial launch on all platforms while Witcher sold 6 million, though largely due to hype.
Looking at the 5 million sales for Switch vs 6 million sales in launch, we could somewhat estimate that 13 million copies sold on launch is quite close to where the sales are going to land with Switch 2 in it's lifetime.
Though there's an argument to be made that Cyberpunk would run much better and be far better looking than Witcher 3 in Switch's very dated hardware, which would probably boost the appeal a bit.
And considering again that launch games are... not that impressive... that Cyberpunk COULD sell somewhere in the range of 7-15 million in launch month, and 7-15 million in the lifetime of the system... unless something changes, like new expansion gets released (even though CDPR stated that THEY are not working on expansion, doesn't mean that Virtuos isn't, and they've had roughly 2 years to work on it, considering they started their Warsaw studio May 11, 2023
Considering Cyberpunk has sold already 30 million uniits (end of 2024), it's likely that Switch could boost the sales to 45 million to 50 million units... again this is without anything else happening.
Of course it all could change but seeing the poor launch titles made me feel like this would be good opportunity to capitalize on the performance of the Switch 2 version marketing.
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One thing to note is that there's somewhat a downturn happening in trade globally, which will likely to have some impact on the sales of the system and thus less sales of the game.
While stocks in companies like 11Bit studios went down over 10%, CDPR stayed only 2% down (1,89%), which seems to indicate while others were panicking out, the promise of good sales of the game due to lack of good launch titles for Nintendo seemed to negate most of the fear.
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I think this game CDPR (or Virtuos) to push the expansion idea further or at least some kind of marketable material to a potential 55-60 million copies sold (lifetime) before the sequel comes out.
Perhaps because the launch of Switch 2 is so close, that CDPR isn't currently focusing on marketing any expansion of other paid content.
Lets say best estimate is that Cyberpunk Switch 2 edition will sell 15 million copies, which is 3 792 987 000,00 zlotys if the product is fully priced (60e). Taking away the fee from marketplace is 30% cut and other sales taxes, which would put the estimate close to that 2 billion zlotys suggested in recent investors call as
being possible to reach with "new content"...
I think Switch 2 Cyberpunk is far likely more appealing than what it was for other consoles because this is an action shooter, so having an actual Switch 2 controller working as mouse would probably boost the interest slightly...
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Still, I think Cyberpunk suffers a little console weakness due to not having keyboard and mouse to work with. Of course it could be that for Cyberpunk case, most people wanting to buy the game would get it for PC, so that 15 million sale figure could be vastly exaggerated and close to 5 million.
I think performance of the game could make some changes to it, and if lets say month before release there's a new patch with 3rd person mode and some other cool gimmicks being added, it could help up the reception slightly and keep people talking.
I have relative in my Steam who have Cyberpunk 2077 in Wishlist, I guess them hoping for a good deal / game to be "finished", or even upgrading their own hardware to play the game (similar how Witcher 3 was quite hard to run well upon launch), which is likely the reason why CDPR keeps promising the game is "finished" even while still were working in future patches, granting stuff like car color customization.
Looking at the chart for Witcher 3 sales overtime
You can see that the game really took a big sales bump during the 5th year after release. 4 years after release of last expansion.
So what changed? Well the game was still widely hyped and probably the technology caught up and became affordable enough for most people to buy the game.
Also to take in mind that Witcher 3 sold in 2 separate years, even increasing the following year. So probably close to 40-45% of the sales came from 6 month window of the total sales from 2019-2020. Considering Cyberpunk is selling yearly ~
4.25 million copies (copilot) this means that from 2 year sales (peaked) the potential for Switch 2 sales also seems to indicate that 5-10 million range, not the 15 million.
But once again, the game has been receiving a large praise. Perhaps a new Netflix show would be unveiled soon, but it's likely the release of said series would be next year, since it took Edgerunners over a year from teasing to release... however maybe this isn't a rule so it's hard to say... the show proved that the game can sell very well during the release of the anime series.
Could it be that Switch 2 could be bringing that peak sales for 2025? Seems plausible.
Going back to my personal estimate i'd say close to 10 million is something I'd assume, but it's really hard to guess what will ultimately happen. Even releasing a new patch could greatly impact the game's success. Many games like Fortnite and Mindcraft didn't really become mainstream popular until much later after release.
So again, I'd guess 10 million if nothing changes, if there's something significant (as CDPR seemed to tease some future content by the outsourcing studio) we could see the sales going close to 15 million... perhaps more if there's truly some big secrets that are yet to be unveiled... but if nothing changes 10 million, if the performance isn't crystal clear, or that Switch 2 users aren't motivated due to lack of mouse control, or aren't the right target audience etc, or generally just look to buy competing game like that 120 fps Metroid game, I'd say even worst case scenario would be close to 5 million sales, which would still be pretty good... but would look rather weak considering Witcher sales for Switch which was so inferior experience compared to rest of consoles... and if Cyberpunk gets to run well.... and there's some future content...
Ok I'm starting to ramble now.
Btw, has anyone found any hands on video about Switch 2 Cyberpunk yet?
Edit Found one:
