The Witcher 3 has sold over 60 million copies and counting. We learned that this past May, for the record, and it comes roughly two years after Bethesda guru Todd Howard said the same for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. In other words, while Skyrim might still be somewhat ahead, Geralt of Rivia’s epic final adventure is keeping things ridiculously close. Why make this tired comparison? Because both games have vastly exceeded the norm for even the most successful role-playing games of all time.
Skyrim’s success was hardly a given, but CD Projekt was especially worried about The Witcher 3. Why? Well, myriad reasons, no doubt, but as we’re now learning, even the Caped Crusader seemed poised to stare Geralt down and win. ‘Twas none other than Batman: Arkham Knight that put the fear of god into CDPR some ten years past, and while it’s hard to imagine things going sideways for The Witcher 3 in hindsight, there’s probably a world where that did, in fact, occur.
Fear The Night
In a chat with PC Gamer, CDPR co-CEO Michal Nowakowski recalls the trying time. In essence, Batman: Arkham Knight was slated to launch near-simultaneously with The Witcher 3, and that was a mortifying prospect. While The Witcher 2 was no sales slouch, this was still a small-fry series on the commercial front relative to the massive numbers that Warner Bros and Rocksteady had seen from the prior installments in the Arkham catalog.
Compounding matters, the United States and much of Europe saw Warner Bros as The Witcher 3’s publisher. In practice, this means that retailers, which choose which new titles to market on the storefronts and online based on potential sales pull, were already primed to lean toward Batman… and Warner Bros themselves would have seen just cause in such a prospect. “I still remember how bombed we were when we learned that Rocksteady is gonna launch Arkham Knight” right alongside The Witcher 3, Nowakowski recalls.
. “Let’s say GameStop has, like, a window, the main window, which [they] are going to sell you for. Two weeks to someone, two weeks to someone else. And it’s their decision. It’s their call. Whether they’re going to give it to this game or that game, it’s kind of their bet, and it could kill or elevate your game depending on the decision. And of course, they wanted to make the right one to make sure that they sold as many units as possible.” -Michal Nowakowski
As luck would have it, Batman: Arkham Knight received what I believe was its third consecutive delay, pushing its June 3 launch back slightly to June 23. This cleared up plenty of much-needed marketing time for The Witcher 3, and it was ultimately much ado about nothing. How much this helped is impossible to gauge, but CDPR would certainly know better than I would, and they were pretty goshdarn worried.
“[Rocksteady] showed up [for] our demo,” the CEO remembers well. “Like, oh god, these guys – really at the top. I mean, they’re gonna just roll over us.” The Batmobile did not, in fact, roll over Geralt, and the rest is history.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
5.0/5
- Released
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May 19, 2015
- ESRB
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M for Mature: Use of Alcohol, Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Nudity, Strong Language, Strong Sexual Content
