Phantom Liberty, the Cyberpunk 2077 DLC that adds Idris Elba and some kind of rocket ship (I think? I haven’t actually gotten to it yet), has done quite well for itself. That’s according to a recent CD Projekt Red earnings call as well as the company’s Twitter account, which was out yesterday boasting about 4.3 million copies of the DLC sold since launch.
pic.twitter.com/8PywPUgcdKNovember 28, 2023
For reference, CDPR was bragging about Cyberpunk selling 25 million copies early last month, in the heat of its post-2.0, post-DLC, “we’ve fixed the game now” victory lap. 4.3 million expansion sales on top of that is nothing to sniff at, and equals an estimated 20% “attachment ratio,” or the number of people who bought Cyberpunk’s base game that also bought the DLC. I feel like there’s probably a better term for that phenomenon, but maybe that’s why I don’t have an MBA.
If you’re wondering whether an attachment ratio of 20% is good or not, apparently it is. Obsidian design director Josh Sawyer—of Fallout: New Vegas, Pillars of Eternity, and Pentiment fame—weighed in through the quote tweets to say that his own studio usually hopes for “a ~25% attachment rate for DLCs released within a few months of the base game,” meaning “a 20% attachment rate on an expansion 2.5 years after launch is pretty impressive.”
In previous stat-based brags, CDPR has given a platform-by-platform breakdown of where people are buying the Cyberpunk 2077 DLC. In October, those numbers were: 13% on Xbox, 20% on PS5, and 68% on PC, the most cyberpunk platform of all. I can’t imagine those numbers have changed much in the 2-ish months it’s been since CDPR last spoke sales figures.
Anyhow, I’m glad Phantom Liberty’s doing well, as even though I haven’t even reached it yet, my venerable colleagues tell me it’s really quite good. PCG’s Ted Litchfield scored it 87% in his Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty review, calling it a “splendid sendoff for the world CD Projekt’s been working on for the better part of the last 10 years.”
