CD Projekt Red released its consolidated financial report for the third quarter of the year, revealing that it has recently concluded the best quarter in its history, primarily thanks to Cyberpunk 2077. The Warsaw, Poland-based developer generated the equivalent of $54.3 million in revenue over the three-month period ending September 30. Its profits amounted to some 40% of that figure, as it ended the quarter approximately $21.85 million in the green.
The company's latest RPG had a highly controversial release in late 2020, largely because the version of the game for the last-generation consoles suffered from massive performance issues and bugs, leading to fans asking for refunds en masse. That said, the Cyberpunk 2077 refund debacle now seems like ancient history, as CDPR spent the last two years fixing the game across all platforms, on top of putting out free DLC on a fairly regular basis. The studio consequently managed to win back a lot of consumer goodwill and is currently highly optimistic about its future prospects, citing this record-breaking quarter as just a sign of greater things to come.
CDPR released the massive 1.6 Edgerunners update for Cyberpunk 2077 in early September, which concluded its work on the last-gen versions of the game following months of focused efforts that made for a hectic start to the last quarter, CFO Piotr Nielubowicz said in today's address to investors. While the ongoing influx of content contributed to the game's continued success, Nielubowicz pointed to the recent debut of the Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Netflix show as the single biggest boost to the game's Q3 2022 sales. The show hit Netflix's top ten lists in 19 countries shortly following its mid-September release, helping the game surpass 20 million in lifetime sales later in the month.
Now that CDPR is done patching the last-gen versions of the game, its core development team has refocused on wrapping up work on Phantom Liberty, the first paid DLC for Cyberpunk 2077, Nielubowicz said. The company has yet to attach a firm release date to the expansion, having only said that Phantom Liberty is planned to debut sometime in 2023.
CPDR's latest financial report also reveals that the studio still has high hopes for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. The company projects that the sales of the seven-year-old game are likely to enjoy a significant boost following the release of The Witcher 3's next-gen version scheduled for mid-December.
In the meantime, the sequel to Cyberpunk 2077 is already in pre-production, together with another Witcher trilogy and a brand-new RPG series code-named "Hadar," CDPR revealed last month. The company is also working on remaking The Witcher, its first-ever game that turned 15 just last month.
Cyberpunk 2077 is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. The Google Stadia version of the game will remain playable until the service shuts down on January 18, 2023.