News that CD Projekt Red is reorganizing shouldn’t come as a surprise given that the studio was responsible for one of the biggest failed launches of recent times. The Cyberpunk 2077 developer announced a change in strategy through a video message to investors and said that it will now develop multiple AAA games and expansions in parallel. The studio’s earlier strategy involved focusing all the attention on just one particular AAA title at a time.
It was also made clear by CD Projekt Red that The Witcher and Cyberpunk will remain the two main franchises it will work on. Two cross-functional teams will work on both the games at the same time from 2022 onwards. And promotions for new games will begin much later in their development cycles.
Cyberpunk 2077 was first announced back in 2012, while a teaser for it was released the following year. While it was initially supposed to come out in 2019, several high-profile delays led to its launch being pushed to December 2020. Despite this, anticipation among fans was at its peak when the game hit store shelves, however, everything went downhill for the studio after that.
The PS4 and Xbox One versions of the game contained game-breaking bugs and had serious performance issues, making them unplayable. CD Projekt Red was forced to apologize and issue refunds for all versions of the game, as the PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S versions also had serious bugs.
“We have learned many things from our marketing and PR campaigns for Cyberpunk 2077 and see things that need to change in the future,” CD Projekt Red executive MichaÅ‚ Nowakowski has said. For the time being, the studio will continue its focus on patches, free DLC, and the delayed next-gen update for Cyberpunk 2077, apart from the mobile Witcher spin-off, The Witcher 3’s next-gen update, and the ongoing development of Gwent.