Today, developer CD PROJEKT RED held its Investor Day presentation and it provided several updates regarding the company and its future. CD PROJEKT RED announced that Cyberpunk 2077 has surpassed 25 million units sold. The developer of Cyberpunk and The Witcher series also provided small update on the Cyberpunk sequel talking about some of its design choices and where development is at the moment. CEO Adam Kiciński made an announcement leading to a shakeup in management. CD PROJEKT RED also revealed plans for a live-action Cyberpunk project.
Cyberpunk 2077’s new sales milestone of over 25 million units sold, up five million from September 2022 is quite a feat considering the criticism the developer faced when the game was originally released which led to PlayStation delisting it from the PlayStation Store. Cyberpunk 2077 reached the new sales figure within two years and 10 months meaning it is outpacing The Witcher 3’s performance. The Witcher 3 didn’t reach 25 million until after the four-and-a-half-year mark. CD PROJEKT RED also revealed that the game’s expansion Phantom Liberty sold three million units within its first week.
Talking about the sequel, which is codenamed Project Orion, CD PROJEKT RED Chief Creative Officer Adam Badowski said “This project is on a conceptual design level right now, and it’s going to be designed by a team of veterans who were responsible for fine-tuning Cyberpunk 2077 and designing Phantom Liberty.
We’re going to work out of North America, Vancouver and Boston locations, team leadership are already there. And late in 2024, we’re going to work with teams comprising several dozen people, while as a target, half of the developers are going to work out of Northern US and the other half out of Poland.”
Cyberpunk 2077 Quest Director Pawel Sasko was asked whether or not the sequel will have a third-person perspective. He was also asked whether or not the team regretted not including one for Cyberpunk 2077.
“There are no regrets on our part,” he said. “What we wanted was for Cyberpunk to have its own identity and to be noticeable as this different thing. These days it’s YouTube, Twitch, and screenshots that sell games, and this is the way one can use to show that identity and individuality to players.
“I wanted to say that the first-person perspective is the main characteristics for Cyberpunk and its perception by the players too. It’s also noticeably different from The Witcher, and this helped us craft the product identity as such.” Currently, the devs aren’t sure if they are going to add or change the perspective with Sasko saying “But for Orion we’re yet to see.”
CD Projekt Red CEO Adam Kiciński has announced that he will be moving to a supervisory role at the company in 2025. At the end of 2024, he will be stepping down as CEO as part of a larger management shake-up. Kiciński will resign as a member of the management board at the end of that year.
Adam Badowski, Chief Creative Officer, and Michal Nowakowski, Chief Commercial Officer will take over as joint-CEOs as of January 1, 2024.
CD PROJEKT RED also announced that they are partnering with Anonymous Content on a live-action Cyberpunk 2077 project.