Cyberpunk 2077’s extremely acclaimed and big enlargement, Phantom Liberty, nearly looks like its personal recreation. That’s most likely as a result of the builders behind the enlargement spent over $60 million on growing Phantom Liberty and $21 million on advertising and marketing it, bringing the whole price of manufacturing the DLC to about half of what it price to develop the whole Cyberpunk 2077 base recreation. And Cyberpunk’s prices rise much more once you issue within the fortune CD Projekt Pink spent simply plugging up the unique launch’s worst issues after its disastrous launch.
After launching in a fairly terrible state in 2020, CDProjeckt Pink’s huge open-world RPG Cyberpunk 2077 has obtained quite a few updates, bug fixes, and even a well-liked Netflix anime. All of this helped the futuristic RPG turn into extra widespread than ever. And whereas some say the sport’s core issues can’t be mounted, CDPR hasn’t given up on Cyberpunk 2077. The RPG’s solely deliberate DLC, Phantom Liberty (and the free 2.0 replace) launched on September 26 to rave opinions, and followers declaring the sport “saved.” However constructing one thing like Phantom Liberty isn’t low cost.
On October 5, throughout an investor’s presentation, CDPR revealed the whole funds for Phantom Liberty. Its prices have been cut up between zł275 million on “direct manufacturing expenditures” and one other zł95 million on “advertising and marketing marketing campaign prices.” If we do some changing, that equals out to simply about $63 million and $21 million in USD, respectively, or roughly $84 million whole.
As a degree of comparability, it reportedly price $174 million to develop Cyberpunk 2077. That quantity will get ever bigger once you issue within the $142 million CDPR spent on advertising and marketing the dystopian RPG. Taking a look at these numbers, it’s nearly spectacular how little cash CDPR spent on advertising and marketing the brand new DLC in comparison with the principle recreation.
Regardless of the way you slice it, spending almost $85 million on growing and advertising and marketing a single enlargement is wild and an indication of simply how costly recreation improvement is lately. It’s additionally a terrific instance of how huge, costly video games aren’t allowed to be flops.
Cyberpunk 2077 needed to be a beloved hit, regardless of the associated fee
One other attention-grabbing quantity revealed throughout the presentation is that CDPR spent zł178 million or about $40 million USD on bringing the sport to next-gen consoles and constructing the sweeping 2.0 replace. Add that quantity to the above Phantom Liberty figures and you might feasibly declare CDPR spent nearly $125 million on fixing Cyberpunk 2077’s picture and saving its popularity.
Nevertheless, primarily based on how effectively Cyberpunk 2077 and its new enlargement are promoting after the replace—CDPR claims there was a “surge” of gross sales following replace 2.0—the corporate is probably going going to wind up making some huge cash off the sport. CDPR identified throughout the investor presentation that it’s “assured” that the DLC and its major recreation shall be “huge sellers” for a very long time, pointing towards the continued gross sales of The Witcher 3 and its DLC years after launch.
With the event of the Cyberpunk 2077 sequel beginning and information of a live-action spin-off within the works, it is smart that CDPR could be keen to take a position a lot cash into ensuring Cyberpunk 2077’s legacy amounted to greater than a failed launch and dangerous console ports. It wanted the sport to be an enormous hit with tens of millions of followers. And it received there, even when it price some huge cash in the long run.
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