In brief: Despite the excitement and a slew of positive reviews, CD Projekt Red has revealed that sales of Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales haven’t met expectations. Part of that reason was likely due to its temporary exclusivity on the video game publisher’s GOG platform.
Thronebreaker, a Gwent-themed RPG set it the world of The Witcher, has been well-received by players and reviewers alike, but CD Projekt’s CEO, Adam Kiciński, says (via Eurogamer), “the game has appealed to the community, which drove up our expectations regarding sales. Unfortunately, as yet, these expectations have not been fulfilled. Still, we remain optimistic [...] We expect to continue to sell Thronebreaker for many years to come, even though the initial period may not have lived up to our initial expectations."
Thronebreaker had been exclusively available on GOG, which is owned by CD Projekt Red, but appeared on Steam earlier this week. It seems the site just can’t compete with Valve’s platform when it comes to user numbers.
“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,” added Kiciński.
The CEO did insist that a Steam launch had always been “considered,” though he didn’t want to go into details. Kiciński added that Thronebreaker has been far from a flop -- the console version will doubtlessly bring in more sales -- it just hasn’t done as well as expected.
“I assume that it will continue to positively affect our bottom line; it is not, of course, a financial failure; it’s just that our expectations are very high.”
You can check out Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales on GOG and Steam, where it holds a ‘Very Positive’ rating.
https://www.techspot.com/news/77464-sales-thronebreaker-witcher-tales-fail-meet-cd-projekt.html
