Witcher 3 break even?

[ShinGnosis]

Witcher 3 break even?

So - I own W1, 2, 3 and the expansion pass. And I have of course read that W3 sold 4 millions copies in 2 weeks. Great! It will probably continue to sell well for the next couple of years too.

Anyone know what the approximate break-even is in terms of sales numbers? Do you have any clue what the target number for W3 was?

I'm only asking because I want CDPR to do well but I don't really know enough about the market to have a clue. Is 4 million close to break even or waaay above?

 

[KingKnee]

AFAIK it cost around $70 million to make and market so they should already be beyond breaking even.

 

[soot00]

They obviously did well with W2 and the sales of that version are nowhere close to W3. Look at it this way, if W2 profits were subpar they would not have attempted W3 with an even greater budget and scope

 

[subcu1ture]

Let us not forget they also haven't stopped working on W3 till the last expansion is released next year.

 

[darxide]

They broke even somewhere in the first 72 hours.

 

[Froshshock]

Did they really break even though, when you have to consider everyone else having to be paid a piece of the pie. Retailers, MS / Sony, Publishers etc.

 

[draconis184]

We have no idea about CDP's margins and production cost per unit, so it's hard to say, really, unless you're the CFO of RED. But it's safe to say that TW 3's sales will eclipse TW 2's. Perhaps even double it.

 

[Tuco]

Did they really break even though, when you have to consider everyone else having to be paid a piece of the pie. Retailers, MS / Sony, Publishers etc.

They explicitly claimed they did in the first 24 hours.
With more than 4 million copies sold at this point, they are way beyond recouping the initial investment now.

 

[uScared]

With more than 4 million copies sold at this point, they are way beyond recouping the initial investment now.

at least one would think that. square enix was still not satisfied with the sales of either tomb raider (3,4 mil) and hitman (3,6 mil). then again, square enix is never satisfied.

 

[Gerudon]

How do people know, that they broke even already? It's not like CDPR gets the full 60 bucks from every PS4 version sold, we also don't know, how the marketing budget was divided between Namco and CDPR.

 

[Smurfin]

CDPR owns GOG, so there is no cut for sales from GOG and GOG sales alone already reached 1.3m copies = 78million.

If the cost was $67m ($32m production, $35m marketing), from GOG sales alone already covered the total cost and gained US$11m profit.
Plus the rest of the sales outside GOG, and future sales.

I hope they will gain as much as possible and use it to expand The Witcher 3 until the last minute of 2016. With their own developments and with the help of modders, this will make The Witcher 3 has more value until it's time for them to move on to Cyberpunk 2077.

Report: The Witcher 3 Had a $67 Million Budget, $35M Spent on Marketing

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has sold over four million copies, which is great news for developer CD Projekt RED, especially considering the game may have had a $67 million budget.

According to a story published by the Polish website Gazeta.pl that was translated by some NeoGAF users using Google Translate, The Witcher 3 took around a 120 million PLN ($32 million) to create. On top of that, CD Projekt also had a $35 million marketing budget for The Witcher 3, putting the total amount of money spent of the game at around $67 million.

While the numbers have not yet been confirmed by CD Projekt, the article does appear accurate. What do you think of the game’s fairly large budget?

Let's take a look at GTA 5 , source from imdb.com :

Box office / business for
Grand Theft Auto V (2013) (VG) More at IMDbPro »
Budget
$265,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend
$1,000,000,000 (worldwide) (19 September 2013)

Production Dates
2009 - 2013

Total Units sold : 52 million

 

[Froshshock]

This is probably the most relevant place to post it, but it could have some not so nice consequences for CDPR.

http://n4g.com/news/1741289/cd-proj...-circumstances-of-the-disclosure-of-sales/pen

 

[MattMk1]

I would imagine they're doing OK.

They actually have more control over their product than most developers, their parent company owns a publishing platform (GoG), and they're not dependent on outside publishers for funding.

They're not selling GTA or Call of Duty numbers, but for the RPG market, they're moving a ridiculous amount of games - I think the 4 million in 2 weeks easily beats every recent Bioware title, for example.

I also have to think their costs are a lot lower - Poland is part of the EU these days, so not as much lower as they'd have been 20 or even 10 years ago, but I imagine it's still a LOT cheaper to make this game over there than it would be in North America or Western Europe.

Actually, to be honest, considering how "small" their development team was for a game this size, one of the things I worry about is how well all the people doing the grunt work were taken care of. Hope they can sustain this level of quality and that Cyberpunk will be every bit as insanely good...

 

[gtcarlson]

We have no idea about CDP's margins and production cost per unit, so it's hard to say, really, unless you're the CFO of RED. But it's safe to say that TW 3's sales will eclipse TW 2's. Perhaps even double it.

It's surely doubled the sales already, if not soon. last official one I saw said 6m for Witcher 1 and 2 and Witcher 3 is already over 4m.

 

[MattMk1]

This is probably the most relevant place to post it, but it could have some not so nice consequences for CDPR.

http://n4g.com/news/1741289/cd-proj...-circumstances-of-the-disclosure-of-sales/pen

Seems like much ado over nothing, to be honest. The link you posted isn't working for me, but I'm assuming this is the story that maybe CDProjekt is being investigated by a regulatory agency over improperly releasing information that could affect stock prices?

Considering that the "confidential" information they released publicly was that the game is selling really well and they recovered their investment during day one of sales, I really have a hard time seeing this as a serious case. I guess you never know once bureaucratic parasites get involved, but if game companies were punished for releasing standard PR about how well their game is selling...

Also, way to find the downside... this story also includes the information that their stock price went up 25% following the W3 release.

 

[DuranA]

This is probably the most relevant place to post it, but it could have some not so nice consequences for CDPR.

http://n4g.com/news/1741289/cd-proj...-circumstances-of-the-disclosure-of-sales/pen

So apparently they are under investigation for the way they released the sales data?

CDProjekt is being investigated by a regulatory agency over improperly releasing information that could affect stock prices?

Which apparently it did by over 20%, not a small amount.

 

[Froshshock]

Seems like much ado over nothing, to be honest. The link you posted isn't working for me, but I'm assuming this is the story that maybe CDProjekt is being investigated by a regulatory agency over improperly releasing information that could affect stock prices?

Considering that the "confidential" information they released publicly was that the game is selling really well and they recovered their investment during day one of sales, I really have a hard time seeing this as a serious case. I guess you never know once bureaucratic parasites get involved, but if game companies were punished for releasing standard PR about how well their game is selling...

Also, way to find the downside... this story also includes the information that their stock price went up 25% following the W3 release.

Source to the post itself, http://bigaming.com/the-witcher-3-w...the-circumstances-of-the-disclosure-of-sales/

It's not about finding the downside either, but just posting the information itself. You never know how things turn out in these cases, because people smell money.

 

[TheBaldGuy]

They broke even at about the Tree Fiddy mark i believe.

 

[Hathur]

Witcher 3 is already turning considerable profit for CDPR, costs have been recouped. Witcher 1 & 2 were also profitable, but took awhile to do so, whereas Witcher 3 achieved it in just 2 days about.

Suffice to say, CDPR is very happy right now and they are certain to have sufficient funds to move on with their next project(s) once they finish their witcher 3 expansions.

 

[whiteroseblackthorn]

Did they really break even though, when you have to consider everyone else having to be paid a piece of the pie. Retailers, MS / Sony, Publishers etc.

I will say this much. CDPR doesn't have a publisher to deal with so that big chunk of the pie goes straight to them. It doesn't take NEARLY as much to meet high profits. The whole publisher BS (middlemen) is the reason gaming, and everything else in every other industry has gone to crap. That is why square-enix isn't satisfied, because they ask for to much, same with EA and Activision. With them out of the picture, they can make AAA titles without someone telling them what they need to do and to give us the gamer what we want, while the devs succeed to make even better games. So yes, they have already made their money back big time. This is going to go into Cyberpunk and other IP that will benefit the gamers, and not the greedy publishers. Lets just hope that this NEVER changes, and no one tries to buy them out. These publishers need to fix their model of business if they want to succeed instead of trying to force it on us!