CD Projekt Red (CDPR) co-CEO Michal Nowakowski confirmed during a recent earnings call that the team will be looking at further animation projects within the world of Cyberpunk, mostly thanks to the overwhelming success of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners.
“[The developer is] definitely planning to do more in terms of animation,” Nowakowski says (via Gizmodo). “Expect to see more for sure, but that’s as far as I can go right now.” While this isn’t a lot to go off, it’s still great to hear that CDPR is thinking about how to approach more animation.
However, like in past financial earnings calls, the discussions were mostly centred around upcoming projects, The Witcher 4 (codenamed “Polaris”) and Cyberpunk 2 (codenamed “Orion”). These are two massive developments that are quite rightly taking up a lot of resources and focus. In an investor’s presentation, Nowakowski outlined an aim for half the development team from the US and Poland to be working on Cyberpunk 2 by late 2024.
A new animated series probably wouldn’t take up too much time as CDPR will likely take a supervisory role for any project undertaken. For Edgerunners Studio Trigger did most of the heavy lifting when it came to storyboarding and animating the short show. But it still makes sense for The Witcher 4 and Cyberpunk 2 to be the priority above all else.
Edgerunners released around the same time as a major Cyberpunk 2077 update, which was a great strategy for convincing players to give this once-messy game another go. If CDPR has another tear-jerking anime in the pipeline, it’s likely it’ll keep it cooking until it’s ready to generate hype for an imminent release.
The anime was so successful, in fact, that it pushed CDPR to “the best third quarter in our entire history,” according to the chief financial officer, Piort Nielubowicz. “With consolidated revenues at zł246 million ($54.3 million), mostly owing to strong sales of Cyberpunk. The group posted zł99 million ($21.8 million) in net profit.”
This doesn’t really come as a surprise. The 10-episode show was absolutely fantastic, and despite its heartbreaking ending, I’ve rewatched it a good few times. If the aim of this anime was to showcase all the reasons why Night City is probably one of the coolest videogame settings then it passed with flying colours.
