Friday, March 31st 2023
Cyberpunk 2077 Experiences Sales Boost, CD Projekt Rakes in Almost $222 Million in Revenue
CD Projekt has revealed that 2022 was its second-best year in terms of financial results - it cites an uptick in sales of action role-playing shooter Cyberpunk 2077 as the main reason behind the nice boost to its earnings - around $222 million in revenue, leading to about $80 million in net profit. The Cyberpunk intellectual property has expanded beyond the scope of the video games format and onto the small screen - evidently a combination of the Netflix anime series adaptation and continued efforts into polishing and expanding the game has spread a positive word of mouth. The company states: "In 2022 CD PROJEKT RED carried out intensive work on Cyberpunk 2077, which resulted in successive updates and the next-gen console edition of the game. An important event was the well-received Netflix premiere of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. It attracted many new players to the game, and convinced many others to revisit Night City."
Adam Kiciński, CEO of CD PROJEKT was buoyed by these results and set expectations for continuations in both fields in the future: "The popularity of the series and the positive reception of the update, released a week before the premiere, had a notable effect on Cyberpunk sales and general sentiment around the game, as evidenced by gamers' reviews. This is a clear sign that deeper involvement in our franchises and expanding their reach is the right way to go. Another important event supporting the Cyberpunk franchise will be the release of Phantom Liberty - a large expansion scheduled for this year."
Industry analysts are somewhat surprised by the company's good fortunes in 2022 - after all, no new mainline game has been released by the development or publishing group since the Cyberpunk 2077 launch date in late 2020. The game managed to top sales figures of 13 million units sold within ten days of its December 10 release date. The Witcher series continues to sell in healthy numbers, which also helps to bolsters the company's bottom line.
CD Projekt has undertaken rapid studio growth in recent years, and has even invested in operations within its home country of Poland as well as outfits overseas. Major plans were outlined in 2022 for the parallel development of multiple Witcher games, and a transition to the usage of Unreal Engine 5 for all future titles, in order to embrace more industry tools. It was widely reported that the team experienced major headaches connected to its proprietary REDengine during the making of Cyberpunk 2077. One of their Witcher spin-off games, Project Sirius, is currently on rocky ground - and the company recently revealed that Sirius is being restarted following a complete write-off of funds spent on pre-production at The Molasses Flood studio. CD Projekt's excellent 2022 sales figures will lessen that relatively small financial blow.
The company will be stashing a lot of the extra cash into ambitious growth plans, Piotr Nielubowicz, Vice President and CFO of CD PROJEKT said: "Thanks to solid sales of Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3 our consolidated revenues reached 953 million PLN, with over 347 million PLN in net profit. A large portion of this profit - over 200 million PLN - was invested in our future development projects."
The Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty DLC will only be released to current-gen platforms: PS5, Xbox Series X|S, as well as PC. It is expected to launch later in 2023 - CD Projekt Red has hinted that a proper reveal event is incoming around June time.
Source:
CD PROJEKT Official News
Adam Kiciński, CEO of CD PROJEKT was buoyed by these results and set expectations for continuations in both fields in the future: "The popularity of the series and the positive reception of the update, released a week before the premiere, had a notable effect on Cyberpunk sales and general sentiment around the game, as evidenced by gamers' reviews. This is a clear sign that deeper involvement in our franchises and expanding their reach is the right way to go. Another important event supporting the Cyberpunk franchise will be the release of Phantom Liberty - a large expansion scheduled for this year."
CD Projekt has undertaken rapid studio growth in recent years, and has even invested in operations within its home country of Poland as well as outfits overseas. Major plans were outlined in 2022 for the parallel development of multiple Witcher games, and a transition to the usage of Unreal Engine 5 for all future titles, in order to embrace more industry tools. It was widely reported that the team experienced major headaches connected to its proprietary REDengine during the making of Cyberpunk 2077. One of their Witcher spin-off games, Project Sirius, is currently on rocky ground - and the company recently revealed that Sirius is being restarted following a complete write-off of funds spent on pre-production at The Molasses Flood studio. CD Projekt's excellent 2022 sales figures will lessen that relatively small financial blow.
The company will be stashing a lot of the extra cash into ambitious growth plans, Piotr Nielubowicz, Vice President and CFO of CD PROJEKT said: "Thanks to solid sales of Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3 our consolidated revenues reached 953 million PLN, with over 347 million PLN in net profit. A large portion of this profit - over 200 million PLN - was invested in our future development projects."
45 Comments on Cyberpunk 2077 Experiences Sales Boost, CD Projekt Rakes in Almost $222 Million in Revenue
From what I've seen, there's just too many details in the base material for a single game, CP2077 feels more like an introduction to the world, with the story of V, and to get deeper we would need other games that would tell a different story. The story of someone else from a differeent point of view. Yea it's obvious that the devs didn't quite reached their initial ambition, but truth to be told, if you are not doing a "game as a service" making a mega game where you can do everything and anything is also a recipe for endless development hell. Modern games could use a slight reduction in scope to focus on strong core mechanics and world coherence. We discussed a lot about it in the CP2077 thread: the release would have been much stronger if the game assumed to be more linear from the beginning. Being a good linear game is better than being an "unfinished" open world. (Especially with it being their first go at an urban area, which is very different from making a fantasy world)
Imagine it done with Unreal Engine 5.2 :love::love::love:
My brother played it on Xbox One S right after it came out; he said he ran into some bugs but still really enjoyed playing it.
That game WAS NEVER GOING TO WORK on the older consoles. It should have NEVER been developed for PS4 or Xbox X.
They should have waited for PS5 and Xbox Series X.
That said: now the tech to run the game is cheaper so more people can get in.
The PC version is uncensored. The console version is censored.
Best to play on the PC.
I didn't have bugs with CP77 like many others, but I got bored very fast, and I finished it like a year+ after I first got it, it had its good moments and was OK, but it was no Witcher. I was really surprised at the ending mission, it felt so... unexpected and soon, I thought I was mid game, but nope, I was at the very end. Hope they come with a good expansion (DLC?) so they have more fuel for Witcher 4. But these open world RPGs with their large maps with routine missions are starting to bore me. I miss more focused, "on the rails" experiences like in Dragon Age and Baldur's Gate II, where side quests were actually important and our time was not wasted with "go there, eliminate target" missions.