CD Projekt Looks to New Releases for Bounceback After Rough 2021

CD Projekt endured a brutal 2021 but has room for optimism with major releases on the horizon.

The Polish gaming studio, best known for “Cyberpunk 2077” and the “Witcher” series, saw revenues plunge 58% year-over-year in 2021 to $209.7 million.

Net income dropped 82% year-over-year to $49.3 million. The results still beat expectations, and the company’s stock was up around 1% on Friday.

• The year was marked by a disastrous December 2020 release of “Cyberpunk 2077,” which was so riddled with bugs and glitches that Sony temporarily removed it from the PlayStation store.
• CD Projekt, which spent $280 million on the game, released an updated version for next-generation consoles earlier this year.

Which Quarter for Witcher?

CD Projekt pushed back its planned second-quarter release for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X versions of “The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt,” but maintained that the release would not face lengthy delays.

“There have been a lot of insinuations that we’re going to launch June of next year. That’s completely not the case,” said a representative for CD Projekt Red, the division that produces the Witcher series.

Russian studio Saber Interactive was leading the project, but CD Projekt announced — without mentioning Russia’s attack on Ukraine — that they will instead finish the game in-house.

The “Witcher” series has sold over 65 million copies, over 40 million of which are from “Wild Hunt,” which came out in 2015.

CD Projekt Red is partnering with Epic Games and its Unreal Engine on an upcoming project.