CD Projekt Red, the publisher and developer of The Witcher and Cyberpunk, wants to release major games more frequently. The rapidly expanding company revealed its ambitious plans during its quarterly earnings call on Tuesday (thanks, VGC), intending to make its release schedule "less lumpy".
If you take expansions out of the picture, CD Projekt's list of core releases has been The Witcher (2007), The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings (2011), The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015), and Cyberpunk 2077 (2020). During the call, the company was asked whether it could simultaneously focus on multiple large games. Joint CEO Michał Nowakowski said that was already the case: "We already worked on two projects at the same time when we worked on [Cyberpunk 2077 DLC] Phantom Liberty because that was a game-sized project with almost 300 people working on it, and at the same time we have already been working on Polaris, so we’ve had an experience of working on more than one project."
In fact, as of 30th April, CD Projekt now employs a sizable staff of 630 developers, with the vast majority working on Polaris, the next Witcher game. As is the way of the corporate world, we were even blessed with a graph showing how the staff is currently allocated.
Nowakowski reiterates what the company has on the docket: "We are working on more than one project at this time as well. Cyberpunk 2 is being developed in Boston, and Polaris is being developed predominantly in Europe. We have other projects with other teams like Project Sirius and also in Boston with The Molasses Flood. The Witcher 1 remake is also done in cooperation with Canis Majoris, so you can expect us to release more titles. We plan to increase the cadence of launches. However, I will not comment on the space between the projects time-wise.”
Are you excited about the prospect of more major CDPR releases in the future? Can the company successfully spin so many plates, or do you see another Cyberpunk situation brewing? Let us know in the comments section below.
[source cdprojekt.com, via videogameschronicle.com]
Comments 25
Does anyone hear a crunching sound?
It's good but I just hope they learned frm the whole CP2077 thing ......
@Enuo Yeah it's CD Projekt Red working their developers nearly to the point of collapsing lol, the crunch as they say will be real. 🤪
@Enuo Yeah, just sat on a rabbit.
I'm assuming this connects to plans to boost gog as well. Hard to compete in the store front race, which is a shame because Galaxy is really a nice launcher and drm free is always welcome.
With there focus on graphics I doubt it
As long as they don't rush those projects out the door, like they did with Cyberpunk, I'm all for it.
On the same subject - please make shorter games, people!
Stop pushing those 80h-100h long behemoths, in between 20-40h tops is quite enough!
And slow the graphics advance for a while, the current level of "realism" in games is exemplary, let it rest for a few years.
Concentrate on quality, story and content, and making those games run on current hardware at manageable FPS....
It's worth much more to your buyers than boundary-pushing graphics that bring every console to it's knees.
Crunch would be reduced, games would come out more often, and with better quality, etc... wins all around.
They will now release a game every seven years instead of fourteen.
This is probably why they move from in-house engine to UE5
@Shinnok789 I know what you mean, but for things like The Witcher, 100 hours is fine for me. It’ll be number one on my playlist and the longer it lasts, the better. I must have replayed TW3 10 times over the years.
Is that a quality release or a broken mess release?
Take your time CDPR. You can’t rush perfection and The Witcher 3 was just that!
Do they also intend to finish the games more frequently?
@Shinnok789 I prefer longer RPG based games, with the main story being 30-40ish hours. And if gamers want to do more then they can do 70+. That way one gets good value from the game. And no one is forcing someone to do all of the tasks for the game. As quality big RPGs aren’t released everyday even during the peak console generation years of the PS3/X360.
I’m eagerly awaiting the Witcher 4 or whatever it will be called. I hope it’s as long and as deep as the 3 Witcher. Just keep the main character a cool man then I’m all in even if it isn’t Geralt.
Quality over quantity please, no one wants a repeat of the ***** release that was CP2077.
@Shinnok789 I agree but most people on the Pushsquare comment sections all complain that the ps5's graphics are barely better than the ps4 Pro and the console is old tech incapable of what Sony claims it can run so I'd like to see graphics pushed more to silence the nay sayers.
Its not like they have a lot of ips.what witcher and cyberpunks prequel or sequel or a new ip.word up son
I still remember Thronebreaker and CP. If anything, developers need to spend more time developing games, not less. Annual and biannual franchises usually sacrifice quality in exchange for tighter release windows. I hope CDPR don't head in this direction.
Hopefully they learned their lesson in terms of quality
As long as they're finished at release all will be good. Not three years after. They have to regain a whole lot of good faith.
@NightshadeNL exactly
@Vaako007 Gwent is a must!
@PerpetualBoredom man I was a terrible Gwent player!
@Vaako007 bro me too at first but I build a northern kingdoms deck and I won everything! Gwent was so fricking good. Not the standalone, tho.
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