Five years after putting nearly everything behind a single release, CD Projekt is, as CFO Piotr Nielubowicz put it, at a "completely different stage." The Warsaw-listed studio plans to plow most of the healthy cash flows from older hits back into a wider slate of development, putting capital spending at the forefront when deciding on shareholder distributions. You can see the shift in the metrics: R&D spending jumped 53% in Q2 to above 200 million zloty, and headcount has crossed 1,000.
The headliner is the next mainline Witcher game with Ciri at the forefront, tentatively aimed for 2028. After Cyberpunk 2077's rocky 2020 rollout, the company is prioritizing being ready to ship rather than chasing anyone else's calendar. "We don't want to discuss what the publishing gap should be among the Witcher 3 expansion, the release of GTA VI and The Witcher 4," Nielubowicz said. "The release date of the new game will depend on our readiness and the state of development."
CD Projekt keeps finding ways to earn from its franchises between big drops. Licensing helped lift first-half revenue, driven by tie-ups with external developers, a card game, and an additional season of Netflix Inc.'s Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. According to Nielubowicz, licensing has the potential to become a bigger revenue line as the company's brands achieve broader worldwide recognition.
On the demand side, pricier PC hardware tied to AI-fueled memory and GPU costs hasn't crimped sales. Back-catalog purchases of Cyberpunk and The Witcher remain solid, supported by rising interest from PC gamers in China.
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A remastered edition of The Witcher 3 lands Sept. 29, with a paid Songs of the Past expansion slated for next year. The 2015 game saw a sales bump after last month's Gamescom, adding to 65 million lifetime copies. Even so, Nielubowicz urged caution on predicting the add-on's performance: "Any estimates regarding sales of the expansion may be subject to a large margin of error, as releasing it 12 years after the launch of the main game is an unusual situation in our industry," he said. "We have never been in a publishing situation like this before, and it is difficult for us to forecast it precisely."
Looking out to industry currents, Nielubowicz expects the Nov. 19 launch of Grand Theft Auto VI from Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. to nudge players toward the latest consoles. CD Projekt shares are down 1% this year, lagging the WIG20's 29% climb, weighed in part by confirmation that The Witcher 4 will not arrive until 2028. The stock rallied 66% in 2024 and 26% in 2025.
