Although many people view Cyberpunk 2077 as one of the most highly-anticipated releases coming up this fall, its pre-orders have fallen flat and just aren't living up to CD Projekt Red's expectations. To make matters worse, CDPR is currently grappling with mandatory crunch accusations, so things aren't looking great for the company at the moment.
Cyberpunk 2077 fans have gotten sneak peeks of new content and features recently, so it would make sense for the hype to be high for a game with new reveals available that's getting a November release. That simply isn't the case with this RPG, however, as a report from a video games analytics firm shows that Cyberpunk 2077's numbers aren't where some people might expect them to be.
The firm is called M Science, and one of its most recent analysis reports brought up some surprising news about Cyberpunk 2077's pre-orders. The report says Cyberpunk 2077 is 31% behind where a much more successful game, Red Dead Redemption 2, was at a comparable time pre-launch. While this may not be an entirely fair comparison given how massively popular RDR2 was and is, major game studios like CDPR likely have high goals. Red Dead Online continues to make Rockstar plenty of money in microtransactions, which must look tempting to other huge studios.
However, the report does note that pre-orders are expected to start increasing as the release date gets closer, so there's still hope for Cyberpunk 2077 to finish this pre-order cycle strong. For a game that's been delayed so many times, CDPR would clearly love a successful game, and that point is driven home by its recent move to demand even more time and effort from its devs. Of course, the revelation of mandatory crunch time may end up hurting CDPR and Cyberpunk 2077's pre-orders and sales if people get angry enough to boycott the game.
Red Dead Redemption 2 isn't the only game Cyberpunk 2077 pre-order numbers aren't meeting when one compares the timelines, but it's worth noting that M Science didn't take games older than a year into account. There is a wealth of games over a matter of decades with massively successful pre-orders, hugely overwhelming pre-orders, and everything in between.
If CDPR is going to continue to push its devs to the limits to finally meet a release date for Cyberpunk 2077, it can only hope M Science is correct. The Witcher 3 may be CD Projekt Red's magnum opus, but that doesn't mean its later games can't also be successful.
Cyberpunk 2077 releases November 19 for PC, PS4, and Xbox One, with dedicated releases on PS5, Stadia, and Xbox Series X/S planned.