Cyberpunk 2077's Turnaround Just Gave CD Projekt Its Second-Best Revenue Year Ever

ign.com:

With the rocky launch of Cyberpunk 2077 firmly in the rearview, CD Projekt seems to have fully bounced back from where it was at the end of 2020 both in good will and in financials, celebrating its second-best earnings year in 2022 despite no new major releases.

Per CD Projekt's earnings report, Cyberpunk 2077 revenues were up 18% year-over-year in 2022, with 94% of the units sold being digital. That's a pretty unusual figure in video games, which typically release to enormous unit sales and then see a steady but consistent drop over time. CD Projekt attributes the sales to their long-term work on improving issues with Cyberpunk 2077, as well as the success of the companion Netflix series Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. And having The Witcher 3 around doesn't hurt either.

It's a significant turnaround for a game plagued with bugs and glitches on the base PS4 and Xbox One at launch, which its own developers reportedly did not expect to be ready by its 2020 launch date. But multiple patches since slowly began to rebuild good will, and the one-two punch of a next-gen update in February last year and Edgerunners seems to have convinced people it was worth returning to night City.

CD Projekt expects to release a Cyberpunk 2077 expansion in the second half of this year, titled Phantom Liberty. One slide in the investor presentation indicates that a "marketing campaign" is planned to begin for the expansion in June.

Consolidated revenues for CD Projekt in 2022 reached 953 million PLN ($222 million), with 347 million PLN ($81 million) in net profit. Both revenue and net profit were the second-best in company history. CD Projekt says it has reinvested over 200 million PLN ($47 million) back into future development projects, including the