CD Projekt has announced financial results for the first half of 2023, and also talked about Cyberpunk 2077, its expansion Phantom Liberty and the upcoming game The Witcher.
Speaking about Cyberpunk 2077, we learned that CD Projekt is very pleased with the current number of preliminary orders for the addition of Phantom Liberty in two months that have passed since the start of the campaign. Nevertheless, they expect that most of the preliminary orders will be on the last preval days.
In addition, the basic game has already overcome the line of 80% of positive reviews in Steam. In addition, among the latest reviews almost 90% are positive.
As for the The Witcher franchise and the distribution of labor, by the end of July, the team working on the next main game of the Witcher (code name Polaris) has grown to almost 250 developers (compared to 220 in May). The team working on Phantom Liberty totaled about 300 people, remaining the largest among the team teams.
Turning to financial indicators, we note that sales for the first half of the year amounted to 325.214 million. zloty, which is lower than 377.916 million. zlotys, since over the past six months have not been comparable major releases.
Net profit amounted to 91.271 million. zloty compared to 113.746 million. last year.
It is worth noting that by mid -2023, 1297 people worked in the CD Projekt (compared with 1292 employees), but the company has already announced a number of dismissals that have not yet been included in this statement.
During the session of questions and answers during a press conference, Director General Adam Kiciński noted that in the future more and more developers will be transferred to the development of Polaris. Most of the Phantom Liberty team will go there after starting the expansion.
Some developers will go to other projects, and some will continue to support Phantom Liberty and after complementing the addition.
The studio is also satisfied with the transition to the Unreal Engine 5 engine, which turned out to be a good choice.
We also heard that version 2.0 Cyberpunk 2077, which will be released next to Phantom Liberty, will increase the value of the Cyberpunk franchise, although this effect is intangible and cannot be easily estimated quantitatively. The decision not to make another extension has already been adopted and confirmed, regardless of how much Phantom Liberty will be sold. According to the company’s heads, this solution is due to technological reasons, since the CD Projekt last time works with the Red Engine engine.