CD Projekt RED just revealed how much it cost to save Cyberpunk 2077

This is a lot of money even in a day and age when AAA games could reportedly cost developers over a billion to make, market, and release. It's also emblematic of a worrying trend as games become more and more expensive to develop, forcing the developers to stick titles that are guaranteed to sell well, resulting in fewer experimentations and the lack of opportunities to explore new properties.

It remains to be seen just how much more money CD Projekt RED will spend on the next Witcher game and the sequel to Cyberpunk 2077. We can only guess that the figure will balloon as it will have to use Unreal Engine 5 over REDengine. Although the studio insists that this won't require the company to relearn how to build games from the ground up, it's still a monumental shift. Not to mention, both games will have to clear a relatively high bar after what its most recent predecessors just did.

Combined, both games could cost CD Projekt RED close to a billion to make, perhaps even more including marketing costs, which guarantees the company won't leave anything to chance.

For now, CD Projekt RED can rest easy knowing that Cyberpunk 2077 and its new expansion will sell well. In the same report, CDPR claims that it saw a "surge" in sales after the release of update 2.0 and that it's "confident" both the base game its DLC will be "big sellers" for the company, similar to The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and its DLCs.

Ultimately, CDPR proves you can salvage your game and your reputation as video game developers if you're willing to spend enough money on it.

If nothing else, this should be good news for a company like Blizzard Entertainment as it tries to do what CDPR did with Cyberpunk 2077 with Diablo 4 and Overwatch 2, which are currently not doing well.