SuperData, the Nielsen company focused on digital gaming industry research, shared its latest monthly report for December 2020, where Cyberpunk 2077 dominated the charts.
According to SuperData, it was indeed the biggest digital launch of all time, and the extended refunds of the game did not materially affect total sales.
Cyberpunk 2077 had the biggest game launch of all time, based on digital revenue and digital units sold (10.2 million) *. A successful marketing campaign and the reputation of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt gave the CD to CD Project Red to break records despite issues, including performance issues on consoles, widespread bugs and the indefinite removal of the game from the PlayStation Store. A very large share of digital sales (80%) was on a PC, probably due to the delisting on PlayStation and the general state of the console versions.
* These estimates do contain refunded digital copies, but our data shows that refunds did not materially affect the total sales of the game.
Overall, the digital gaming market had a record month of December with $ 12 billion in gross revenue (the highest monthly total ever recorded) and a 15% year-on-year growth, according to SuperData. Other top performers highlighted in the report include strong Fortnite earnings (the highest the game has seen since August, thanks to massive events such as the battle against Galactus when 15.3 million simultaneous users were online), as well as the highest digital monthly earnings to date for Rockstar’s GTA Online thanks to the release of the Cayo Perico Heist, the game’s biggest update ever released.
Among us, there was a bit of a fall from the incredible player numbers recorded last month, but it was still almost three times as popular as the second most played game (Roblox). SuperData also estimates sales of Nintendo Switch for the game at 3.2 million.