Shares of Polish game publisher CD Projekt rose sharply Wednesday after the company announced several major games it’s working on in the next few years, including new installments in its popular Cyberpunk and Witcher franchises.
In a strategy update late Tuesday, CD Projekt revealed a slew of new titles currently in development, including a sequel to Cyberpunk 2077 codenamed “Orion.” The game “will take the Cyberpunk franchise further and continue harnessing the potential of this dark future universe,” the firm said.
Shares of CD Projekt were up around 7% Wednesday afternoon, having earlier surged as much as 9% at the market open.
It comes after a series of mishaps that have plagued the company over the last two years. After much hype, Cyberpunk 2077’s launch in 2020 was met with rage from gamers who experienced bugs and poor performance on older consoles. The game’s launch came the same year that new machines from Sony and Microsoft were being released.
Backlash to the blunder was so fierce that at one point Sony removed the game from its digital PlayStation Store. Cyberpunk 2077 was later reinstated on the service.
Since then, CD Projekt made several updates and improvements to Cyberpunk 2077, while the release of an anime TV series based on the futuristic sci-fi franchise, “Cyberpunk: Edgerunners,” has helped revive interest in the game.
CD Projekt says it has sold 20 million copies of its Cyberpunk 2077 game to date, and over 65 million copies of all three games in its Witcher franchise.
Last year, the company suffered a ransomware attack that saw hackers steal the source code to several of its games — including The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 — and sell it on the dark web. Notably, CD Projekt at the time refused to pay the ransom demanded by hackers.
Despite a surge in CD Projekt’s share price Wednesday, the stock is down more than 40% since the start of the year.
Here were some other highlights from CD Projekt’s strategy update:
The company proposed a stock-based incentive program for employees aimed at attracting — and retaining — top development talent. According to Chief Financial Officer Piotr Nielubowicz, the program will be “similar to those offered by our top global competitors.”
It is opening a new development studio in Boston, Massachusetts, to help expand its footprint in North America.
CD Projekt plans to buy up to 100 million Polish zlotys ($21 million) worth of its own stock from investors in a share buyback plan.
The company also revealed its co-founder and joint-CEO Marcin Iwinski will be stepping down after 28 years in the role. Iwinski will continue on as joint-CEO until the end of 2022, after which he will become chairman of the supervisory board.
He will remain “a major shareholder” and “active and engaged” in supporting the board, according to a statement Tuesday.
Packed pipeline of games
Three new games in the Witcher role-playing game series are expected to launch in the coming years, including a new installment in the franchise codenamed “Polaris.” Previously announced by the company in March, the game is a follow-up to the firm’s highly-acclaimed The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. It is currently in pre-production.
CD Projekt did not specify a timeline for when the new games would come out but said its three new original Witcher titles would launch within a six-year period after Polaris’ release.
The company plans to push into online multiplayer with some of its future titles, including another game in the Witcher franchise codenamed “Sirius.”
“We are planning to add multiplayer to some of our future titles, and we are planning to do more in the area of TV and film,” said Michal Nowakowski, CD Projekt’s senior vice president of business development.
CD Projekt also announced a totally new game it is working on beyond its main two franchises, codenamed Hadar. The firm did not give away much detail but said it “currently in the conceptual phase.”
It was an unusual display of transparency in the games industry. Big publishers often remain tight-lipped about planned major releases up until they are ready to present some visuals and gameplay to fans, typically at large trade shows.
Companies like Sony and Nintendo have increasingly eschewed showy industry conferences like the E3 expo in favor of smaller-scale updates. After being cancelled once in 2020 and then replaced with a digital alternative in 2021, E3 was again scrapped this year by organizers, who cited health risks surrounding Covid-19.
Amazon on Friday announced it would invest an additional $4 billion in Anthropic, the artificial intelligence startup founded by ex-OpenAI research executives.
The new funding brings the tech giant’s total investment to $8 billion, though Amazon will retain its position as a minority investor, according to Anthropic, the San Francisco-based company behind the Claude chatbot and AI model.
Amazon Web Services will also become Anthropic’s “primary cloud and training partner,” according to a blog post. From now on, Anthropic will use AWS Trainium and Inferentia chips to train and deploy its largest AI models.
Anthropic is the company behind Claude — one of the chatbots that, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, has exploded in popularity. Startups like Anthropic and OpenAI, alongside tech giants such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta, are all part of a generative AI arms race to ensure they don’t fall behind in a market predicted to top $1 trillion in revenue within a decade. Some, like Microsoft and Amazon, are backing generative AI startups with hefty investments as well as working on in-house generative AI.
The partnership announced Friday will also allow AWS customers “early access” to an Anthropic feature: the ability for an AWS customer to do fine-tuning with their own data on Anthropic’s Claude. It’s a unique benefit for AWS customers, according to a company blog post.
In March, Amazon’s $2.75 billion investment in Anthropic was the company’s largest outside investment in its three-decade history. The companies announced an initial $1.25 billion investment in September 2023.
Amazon does not have a seat on Anthropic’s board.
News of Amazon’s additional investment comes one month after Anthropic announced a significant milestone for the company: AI agents that can use a computer to complete complex tasks like a human would.
Anthropic’s new Computer Use capability, part of its two newest AI models, allows its tech to interpret what’s on a computer screen, select buttons, enter text, navigate websites and execute tasks through any software and real-time internet browsing.
The tool can “use computers in basically the same way that we do,” Jared Kaplan, Anthropic’s chief science officer, told CNBC in an interview last month, adding it can do tasks with “tens or even hundreds of steps.”
Amazon had early access to the tool, Anthropic told CNBC at the time, and early customers and beta testers included Asana, Canva and Notion. The company had been working on the tool since early this year, according to Kaplan.
In September, Anthropic rolled out Claude Enterprise, its biggest new product since its chatbot’s debut, designed for businesses looking to integrate Anthropic’s AI. In June, the company debuted its more powerful AI model, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, and in May, it rolled out its “Team” plan for smaller businesses.
Last year, Google committed to invest $2 billion in Anthropic, after previously confirming it had taken a 10% stake in the startup alongside a large cloud contract between the two companies.
LONDON — Apple and Google could face a competition investigation into their dominance of mobile web browsers and apps in the U.K.
The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority issued a report Friday with a provisional decision from an independent inquiry group tasked by the regulator with carrying out an in-depth review of the mobile browser markets.
In the report, the group recommended that the CMA investigates Apple and Google’s activities in mobile ecosystems under the new Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act (DMCC), a new U.K. law coming into force next year which seeks to prevent anti-competitive behavior in digital markets.
The DMCC is akin to the Digital Markets Act in the European Union. It gives the CMA the ability to designate firms as having “Strategic Market Status” (SMS) — which means they have a significant amount of market power in a certain digital business.
Under the rules, the CMA can impose major behavioral changes on firms that have SMS status, including ending “self-preferencing” of their own services, requiring interoperability — essentially allowing one piece of software to work with another smoothly — and banning anti-competitive behavior.
The CMA is required to undertake a formal investigation to give a firm SMS status.
For Apple specifically, the CMA inquiry group said it was concerned the tech giant’s App Store rules “restrict other competitors from being able to deliver new, innovative features that could benefit consumers” — for example, faster webpage loading on iPhone apps.
It added many smaller U.K. developers said they would like to use “progressive” web apps — which allow firms to offer apps outside of an app store — but that this technology “is not able to fully take off on iOS devices.”
The group also said it found a revenue-sharing agreement between Google and Apple to make Google the default search engine on iPhone “significantly reduces their financial incentives to compete in mobile browsers on iOS.”
“Markets work best when rival businesses are able to develop and bring innovative options to consumers,” Margot Daly, chair of the CMA’s independent inquiry group, said in a statement, adding that “competition between different mobile browsers is not working well and this is holding back innovation in the U.K.”
Apple said in a statement that it disagreed with the findings of the report and that it was concerned market interventions imposed under the DMCC “would undermine user privacy and hinder our ability to make the kind of technology that sets Apple apart.”
“Apple believes in thriving and dynamic markets where innovation can flourish. We face competition in every segment and jurisdiction where we operate, and our focus is always the trust of our users” an Apple spokesperson told CNBC via email.
Google was not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC.
The CMA group had also looked into restrictions on the distribution of gaming services on Apple’s mobile app distribution platform. However, it’s now decided to drop this element of the investigation following a decision by the U.S. tech giant to allow cloud gaming services on App Store.
The regulator said interested parties have until Dec. 13 to share comments on its provisional findings. It expects to make a final decision in March 2025.
An iPhone 16 signage is seen on the window at the Fifth Avenue Apple Store on new products launch day on September 20, 2024 in New York City.
Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images News | Getty Images
The Indonesian government expects Apple to increase its proposed $100 million investment into the country, according to state media, as the iPhone maker seeks clearance from Jakarta to sell its latest phones.
The American tech giant’s latest smartphone model doesn’t meet Indonesia’s 40% domestic content requirements for smartphones and tablets and hasn’t been granted clearance to be sold in the country.
The purpose of the ban is to protect local industry and jobs, with officials asking Apple to increase its investments and commitments to the economy in order to gain greater access.
According to a report from Indonesian state media, the country’s Ministry of Industry met with representatives from Apple on Thursday regarding its proposal to invest $100 million over two years.
The funds would go toward a research and development center program and professional development academy in the country, as per the report.
The company also plans to produce accessory product components, specifically mesh for Apple’s AirPods Max, starting in July 2025, it added.
Apple didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from CNBC.
While the new offer is 10 times larger than a proposal that was reported earlier, the government is still striving to sweeten the deal to get a “fair” commitment.
“From the government’s perspective, of course, we want this investment to be larger,” industry ministry spokesperson Febri Hendri Antoni Arif told state media on Thursday.
He said that a larger investment would help the development of Indonesia’s manufacturing sector, adding that its domestic industry was capable of supporting production of Apple devices such as chargers and accessories.
While Indonesia represents a small market for Apple, it also offers growth opportunities as it has the world’s fourth-largest population, according to Le Xuan Chiew, a Canalys analyst focusing on Apple strategy research.
“Its young, tech-savvy population with growing digital literacy aligns with Apple’s strategy to expand [global sales],” he said, noting that it also offers potential for manufacturing and assembly that supports Apple’s efforts to diversify its supply chain.
Success in this market requires a long-term approach, and Apple’s investment offer demonstrates a commitment to complying with local regulations and paving the way for future growth, he added.
