In brief: Given everything that happened with Cyberpunk 2077, one might think CD Projekt Red would want to let the game slowly fade into the background so it can concentrate on new ventures. Joint CEO Adam Kiciński, however, has other plans.
Speaking to Reuters, Kiciński said, "I don't see an option to shelve Cyberpunk 2077. We are convinced that we can bring the game to such a state that we can be proud of it and therefore successfully sell it for years to come."
Cyberpunk 2077, as we know, was one of the most anticipated and hyped games of all time; an RPG from the same studio that brought us The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt had a lot to live up to. Despite selling over 13 million copies in ten days and beating Fallout 4's concurrent player record for a single-player game, Cyberpunk 2077 was rife with technical problems that were even worse on the PS4 and Xbox One.
The disastrous launch saw CD Projekt Red's shares drop 30 percent during the first week of release and multiple refund demands. Less than a month after it arrived, Cyberpunk 2077 had lost 79% of its Steam players.
The horrendous console issues saw Sony remove the game from the PlayStation Store. Four months later and it's still absent, though Kiciński said the company has been in contact with Sony, and that the 1.2 patch is a step toward Cyberpunk 2077's return to the store.
It started to look as if Cyberpunk 2077 was being pushed into the background last month when CD Projekt Red said the game's grand multiplayer experience that was supposedly comparable to GTA Online was "reconsidered." The company also announced it is restructuring to develop multiple AAA games simultaneously.
The PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S versions of Cyberpunk 2077 are arriving in the second half of this year, and the DLC/expansion packs remain in the works. We'll have to wait and see if these are enough to reignite interest in a game that most consider disappointing at best.