SuperData, the company Nielsen focused on research in the digital games industry, shared its last monthly report for the month of December 2020, where Cyberpunk 2077 dominated the charts.
In fact, according to SuperData, it was the biggest digital launch of all time and the game’s extended refunds did not substantially affect aggregate sales.
Cyberpunk 2077 had the biggest game release of all time based on digital revenue and digital units sold (10.2 million) *. A successful marketing campaign and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt’s reputation provided the necessary hype for the CD Projekt Red title to break records, despite issues like console performance issues, widespread crashes and the indefinite removal of the game from PlayStation Store. An extremely high share of digital sales (80%) was on the PC, probably due to the exclusion of the PlayStation and the general state of the console versions.
* These estimates include digital copies that have been refunded, but our data shows that the refunds did not substantially affect aggregate sales of the game.
Overall, the digital games market had a record month in December with $ 12 billion in gross revenue (the highest monthly total ever recorded) and a 15% growth over the previous year, according to SuperData. Other great performances highlighted in the report include strong Fortnite earnings (the highest that the game had seen since August, thanks to massive events like the fight against Galactus when 15.3 million simultaneous users were online), as well as the largest digital monthly earnings to this day for Rockstar’s GTA Online thanks to the launch of Cayo Perico Heist, the biggest game update ever released.
Among us, the incredible number of players registered last month fell, but it was still almost three times more popular than the second most played game (Roblox). SuperData also estimates Nintendo Switch sales for the game at 3.2 million.