At its financial results conference this week, CD Projekt proudly proclaimed that it's sold more than 25 million copies of the Witcher games. Great news for Geralt, but CD Projekt's fans are starved for details on the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077, which barely earned a mention in the 2016 financial support. Luckily, someone asked about its next RPG during the financial results conference, which got us the tiniest tidbit of insight into the next game.
CD Projekt Red studio head Adam Badowski got on stage to say progress on Cyberpunk 2077 was "quite advanced," and that the studio's biggest team comprised of "several hundred people" was working on the game. "It's really good fun for us," he said.
CD Projekt president Adam Kiciński added "The project is very ambitious," pointing out that each of CD Projekt's games has been more successful than the last. "The ambitions are very voracious, so we would like to devote a lot of attention to Cyber, a lot of effort, and quite some time. So we still need some time before the game is ready."
Badowski again: "It's a new title for us, and it will accompany us for years, so it takes effort to prepare it properly."
And back to Kiciński: "The work is ongoing, and it's very intense. So it's not a comfortable situation because we know what it's like, we watch the game, but we can't tell you anything. This year belongs to Gwent. This year we'll be communicating Gwent."
That "accompany us for years" line seems to indicate more from Cyberpunk 2077 than a single game, but who knows if Badowski was referring to DLC or plans for sequels down the road. Either way, it doesn't sound like Cyberpunk 2077 will be a one-and-done game for CD Projekt.
Kiciński also talked briefly about CD Projekt Red planning to develop another game concurrently with Cyberpunk 2077, but offered no further details about what that game might be. Cyberpunk 2077 currently has around 300 developers working on it, and "The team will be growing, because Gwent will be serviced, Cyber will be developed, plus one more game," he said. "We already have [300 people on Cyberpunk 2077], at the very end it will probably be more, maybe 400 people."
When someone in the audience asked about CD Projekt recently hiring concept artists who would typically work on the beginning of a project, Badowski explained that those hires weren't specifically for Cyberpunk. "There are two processes. One, we are building teams. The Cyberpunk team is already complete. We are developing the studio. That is why we have these [job] items on our website, because quite often there are certain opportunity hires. We're looking for top talent on the market. That's why we're looking for concept artists. It's really hard to find the most talented concept artists, and we try to keep extending the team."
And that's everything they had to say about Cyberpunk 2077. Judging by CD Projekt's focus on Gwent, we don't expect to hear substantially more about their next RPG until Gwent is in full release later this year. Fingers crossed for more details before the holidays.
