CD Projekt RED has announced that it will share more information about Cyberpunk 2077’s highly anticipated Phantom Liberty DLC expansion in June.
“Exciting news, chooms: in June we’ll start to share more information about the #PhantomLiberty expansion. Stay tuned!” the publisher said on social media.
The studio also shared that Phantom Liberty was in the final production phase, with 340 developers dedicated to the project during the presentation.
So far, the Poland-based publisher has only released a few teaser trailers for the DLC. Phantom Liberty will take players on a spy mission across a tumultuous, science-fiction dystopia in a new area of Night City, the vast backdrop of Cyberpunk 2077.
Introducing Idris Elba as Solomon Reed, an FIA Agent for the NUSA. Team up and take on an impossible mission of espionage & survival in #PhantomLiberty, a spy-thriller expansion for #Cyberpunk2077 set in an all new district of Night City. Coming 2023 to PC, PS5 & Xbox Series X|S. pic.twitter.com/jjTuv5PDXA
— Cyberpunk 2077 (@CyberpunkGame) December 9, 2022
The forthcoming expansion will offer a narrative-rich RPG experience, with an array of new missions to embark on, unexplored locations to discover and enemies to defeat. Adding to the excitement is the inclusion of Idris Elba, who will bring to life the character of Solomon Reed, an FIA agent for the New United States of America.
The studio also confirmed that new weaponry, bosses and other features were under development. Phantom Liberty will be available on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S sometime this year.
Exciting news, chooms: in June we’ll start to share more information about the #PhantomLiberty expansion. Stay tuned! pic.twitter.com/AePD1pWhxP
— Cyberpunk 2077 (@CyberpunkGame) March 30, 2023
Cyberpunk 2077’s rocky start
CDPR has regained its footing in terms of public opinion and financial success, despite the initial challenges that came with the release of Cyberpunk 2077 in 2020 due to bugs and glitches, especially on base PS4 and Xbox One.
However, the game has made a significant turnaround, thanks to multiple patches that have slowly rebuilt its reputation.
Per CDPR’s financial report, the company had its second-highest earnings year in 2022 despite no major new releases. Cyberpunk 2077 revenues increased by 18 percent year-over-year in 2022, with digital sales accounting for 94 percent of the total units sold.
The report also revealed that in 2022, CDPR had consolidated revenues of 953 million PLN ($222 million) and a net profit of 347 million PLN ($81 million), making it the second-best year in the company’s history in terms of both revenue and net profit.
The publisher attributed this achievement to the studio’s ongoing efforts to address issues with Cyberpunk 2077 and the popularity of the Netflix series Cyberpunk: Edgerunners.
“The popularity of the series and the positive reception of the update, released a week before the premiere, had a notable effect on Cyberpunk sales and general sentiment around the game, as evidenced by gamers’ reviews,” the publisher said.
The company also announced a reinvestment of more than 200 million PLN ($47 million) in future development projects — the multiplayer Witcher game Project Sirius from Molasses Flood, which has been recently “re-evaluated.”
‘Path tracing’ support for Cyberpunk 2077
CDPR is set to launch a new ray-tracing mode for Cyberpunk 2077 patch 1.62, set to go live on April 11. The mode, called path tracing, will allow for even more realistic lighting effects in the game.
Path tracing is rendering techniques studios like Pixar use to create high-quality film visuals. However, its use in video games is GPU-intensive. To bring this feature to Cyberpunk 2077, the publisher has been utilizing Nvidia’s Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) upscaling technology.
— CD PROJEKT IR (@CDPROJEKTRED_IR) March 30, 2023
According to a blog post by Nvidia’s senior product marketing manager, Ethan Einhorn, full ray tracing makes “all light sources cast physically correct soft shadows.”
Nvidia’s senior technology developer engineer, Pawel Kozlowski, added that the new ray tracing mode offers superior visuals to players and could “revolutionize the entire pipeline of how games are being created.”
Although the complete specifications for Cyberpunk 2077’s new ray tracing mode are currently unavailable, Nvidia suggests that only the most advanced Nvidia RTX 40-series GPUs can support the feature.
