During CD Projekt Red's Q3 2020 earnings call, the company assured shareholders that the game would indeed indeed be released on December 10, but Piotr Nielubowicz, the company's chief financial officer, made an interesting clarification about the number of pre-orders for Cyberpunk 2077, referring to the earnings call Referring to slides shown at the company's earnings call, Piotr Nielubowicz revealed some interesting details, calling it "visibly higher" than any Witcher title.

"All revenue generated by Cyberpunk is not booked directly to the profit and loss account - it is all shown on the balance sheet as deferred revenue and will be shown upon the game's release," he said.

Deferred revenue increased by PLN 77.7 million (approximately $20.7 million/£15.5 million) in Q3 2020; according to Nielubowicz, this is "the largest increase in deferred revenue we have ever experienced" and is directly related to the pre-order of Cyberpunk 2077. Overall, Q3 2020 was CD Projekt Red's best performance in recent years.

The game also saw a significant increase in digital pre-orders." The expected ratio of digital to physical in our sales is very strong digital as far as pre-orders go," he said. To be honest, we are definitely seeing more growth than we did with The Witcher 3, and definitely more than 50% will come from the digital channel.

He also puts this figure in context by comparing it to the split between digital and physical sales of The Witcher games. The history of The Witcher 3 shows that the longer a game is on the market, the more the percentage shifts back to digital. With The Witcher 3, the majority of sales are digital. For The Witcher 2 and The Witcher 1, 99% of revenue is digital. So this is the only direction we can expect in the near and long term."

This is quite normal, as games are often purchased through digital sales, and over time the lifetime distribution between digital and physical will skew toward digital. Overall, the popularity of the Witcher franchise is not likely to be lost anytime soon, as "despite its focus on cyberpunk, the Witcher franchise remained popular during the typical dry summer season."

You can read the full earnings call at SeekingAlpha.