Saving Cyberpunk 2077 cost CD Projekt Red $120 million

[midian182]

In a nutshell: Cyberpunk 2077's redemption from launching as a mostly slammed technical mess into the praised current version with its Phantom Liberty DLC has been a long and expensive road. The amount developer CD Projekt Red (CDPR) spent on turning things around – both in fixing issues and marketing – was a massive $120 million, more than most games' entire budgets.

At the Polish dev's recent Investor Day, CDPR revealed that it spent $40 - $41 million to bring Cyberpunk 2077 to the current console generation and create the 2.0 update, which adds a ton of improvements and new features to the game.

The Phantom Liberty expansion, meanwhile, with its Hollywood cast and big production values, cost a massive $84 million to create and promote.

That's a huge amount of money for a piece of DLC. For comparison, CDPR spent $174 million on the development of Cyberpunk 2077 and $142 million on marketing the game. The only title to rank above it on the 'Most Expensive Video Games Ever Made' list is Star Citizen, though its $500+ million budget has been crowdsourced and the final version isn't out – still.

The presentation also revealed that Cyberpunk 2077 has now sold more than 25 million copies since its launch almost three years ago, while Phantom Liberty recorded nearly 3 million in sales during its first week. CDPR CEO Adam Kicinski pointed out that it had taken The Witcher 3 and its expansion packs four years to reach that milestone.

Kicinski confirmed that Phantom Liberty will be the one and only expansion for Cyberpunk 2077 as the company looks to future projects, including the announced sequel, and moves away from its own REDengine in favor of the cheaper and more flexible Unreal Engine.

Cyberpunk 2077's technical problems, accusations that the pre-release trailer had been faked, and its almost unplayable state on last-gen consoles at launch were disastrous for what was one of the most hyped games of all time, leading to refund demands and lawsuits. But a series of patches, upgrades, and new modes started pushing Cyberpunk 2077 closer to the game we were promised, something that finally seems to have happened with Phantom Liberty.

Riding on the back of the DLC's popularity was last week's news that a live-action project, probably a TV show, set in the Cyberpunk 2077 universe is being developed.

If you own Phantom Liberty, make sure to check out our Cyberpunk 2.0: Phantom Liberty Optimization Guide, which can boost your FPS by 40%. You can also take a look at the GPU benchmarks.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/100422-saving-cyberpunk-2077-cost-cd-projekt-red-120.html

 

[MasterAce]

25M copies at 50$ each, just as a guestimate, makes 1,25 billion… propably less if we consider sales etc. But still plenty.

 

[Burty117]

Cyberpunk 2077's technical problems, accusations that the pre-release trailer had been faked...

They're still making trailers of main characters using the subway and trains going in and out of night city. None of which exist in the game itself...

 

[dangh]

I think they got a good lesson and will use it for next projects. They do have potential to create great games, not following the mainstream sterile world and it is a fun to play. I think the burn with initial CP release was needed so they would tone down and focus on quality and user needs.

 

[godrilla]

Current status for cp2077 2.0 is more optimized the Unreal engine 5 and in my opinion looks better too in terms the games out. ( Not the yt demos you see). It's a shame they are going with Unreal engine for next withcher game.

Some great discussions on the topic.

 

[noel24]

25M copies at 50$ each, just as a guestimate, makes 1,25 billion… propably less if we consider sales etc. But still plenty.

After the disastrous launch, It sold for mere $20 on GOG for a very long time.
I bought a box copy for $25.
Theoretically I should feel bad for people who preordered @ $60, but I don't.

 

[godrilla]

After the disastrous launch, It sold for mere $20 on GOG for a very long time.
I bought a box copy for $25.
Theoretically I should feel bad for people who preordered @ $60, but I don't.

if you take the midpoint between them although not an as accurate as direct company figures, lands you at $35 ( $50 plus $20/2 is $35) x 25 million copies = $875,000 in revenue for base game and $40x 3 million for dlc = $120,000. Summation is 995,000 usd.
Although steam had it at $60 so it could be $1.2 billion for both base and dlc in terms of gross revenue.

 

[Puiu]

The majority of that money went into the new DLC, marketing and mix media projects (like the anime).

 

[RandomWAN]

"...accusations that the pre-release trailer had been faked..."

The smoking gun is in the final product. It's a given that they faked the 2018 gameplay demo; that scripted sequence that may have been rendered in the game engine, but the game was never playable as such. The differences are too significant to be anything else.

 

[redgarl]

Yeah, it cost them 120M$, but they sold 25M copies to a whooping 1.5B$ in revenue... at least and this is without the Expansion of Phantom Liberty.

Not only that, but Cyberpunk is the graphical showcase for Nvidia Ray Tracing and DLSS technologies. It is their main argument against AMD.

Sometime, I wonder what the hell the authors of these articles really try to accomplish with such clickbait titles.

 

[Bobbydpue]

Sometime, I wonder what the hell the authors of these articles really try to accomplish with such clickbait titles.

Clickbait titles work, they directly contribute to increased web traffic. If they didn't work people wouldn't use them, but unfortunately, they do work so why would anyone stop using them?

 

[redgarl]

Clickbait titles work, they directly contribute to increased web traffic. If they didn't work people wouldn't use them, but unfortunately, they do work so why would anyone stop using them?

I know that they work, but what I was pointing out is the hypocrisy of the authors trying to deny any of it. We all knows that the goal is to generate clicks for ads revenue.

 

[Burty117]

I know that they work, but what I was pointing out is the hypocrisy of the authors trying to deny any of it. We all knows that the goal is to generate clicks for ads revenue.

Sorry, maybe I missed it, where do they deny using click bait titles?