AFTER the horrible launch of Cyberpunk 2077 in 2020, developer CD Projekt Red (CDPR) decided to forge on with the herculean task of fixing the game. It had to be - its reputation and prestige, which were built on the foundations laid by the critically acclaimed The Witcher game franchise, were up in flames.
Three years later, the game’s first and only expansion, Phantom Liberty, was released to critical acclaim on Sept 26. The expansion’s accompanying “Update 2.0” also overhauled major parts of the game and the end product is what many have called “a brand new game”.
However, the road the studio took to get to this point was paved with a hefty price tag.
During CD Projekt’s investor day on Oct 5, CDPR representatives revealed that the costs for developing and marketing Phantom Liberty were around US$63 million (RM298 million) and US$21 million (RM98 million), respectively, and totaled roughly US$84 million (RM379 million).
On top of that, Kotaku reports that the “2.0 update” cost the studio an additional US$40 million (RM198 million). All together, CDPR spent almost US$125 million (RM591 million) to fix the once-broken game.
To better understand the rising cost of developing “AAA-quality” games, here is a little extra information - the base version of Cyberpunk 2077 from 2020 reportedly cost the studio US$174 million (RM823 million)) to develop and US$142 million (RM671 million) to market.
In this era, these huge games, from the moment development begins, are simply not allowed or afforded to fail.
The same investor presentation also revealed that the expansion has sold three million copies, while the base game has sold over 25 million copies.
Additionally, CDPR announced that Cyberpunk 2077’s sequel, codenamed “Project Orion,” has begun development at a conceptual stage at the CD Projekt Red North America studio.
According to Video Games Chronicle, CD Projekt chief creative officer Adam Badowski claimed that the sequel is being designed by a “team of veterans who were responsible for fine-tuning Cyberpunk 2077 and designing Phantom Liberty”.
