Polish developer is moving towards a two-pronged approach, alternating between The Witcher and Cyberpunk franchises.
People are starting to get excited for Cyberpunk 2077. Well, “starting” is a bit of an understatement. They’ve been excited about the new first-person game, from The Witcher developer CD Projekt Red, since it was announced. But now, on the run-in to release next April and as more details on the game come available, fans are getting really excited.
Case in point, this week’s gameplay footage. It’s a supercut of the behind-closed-doors footage shown to press at E3 and Gamescom, condensed down into 15 minutes of action. That 15-minute video has somehow been stretched to an hour and 15 minutes, with added developer chat. Yikes.
Building on the success of Cyberpunk 2077, which sounds weird, when the game isn’t even out yet, CD Projekt Red sounded bullish in its board dissemination paper for the first half of 2019.
“Managing two separate major franchises (The Witcher and Cyberpunk), along with several independent development teams, enables the Company to conduct parallel work on several projects and smoothens its long-term release schedule,” the company says. “This migration towards a dual-franchise model supported by several independent product lines also permits optimization of manufacturing and financial activities, mitigates important risk factors and makes it easier for Company employees to seek professional fulfilment.”
In short, and without you having to read the whole, tedious document, that means CD Projekt Red is planning on alternating between games in the two franchises. So after the release of (and subsequent post-release, DLC plan for) Cyberpunk 2077, we can expect a different team at CDPR to already be working on a new game in The Witcher franchise.
If you’re wondering where you’ve seen this before, it’s with Rockstar (for one) and its two open-world behemoths, Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption. Now that RDR2 is out, it’s safe to assume that GTA 6 has been in the works, in secret, for a while now. It’s not dissimilar to Activision’s Call of Duty schedule, either, where different studios work on distinctly different parts of the franchise, and each studio gets its turn on a three-yearly cycle, with metronomic regularity. Well, usually.
We’ll have to wait and see exactly what this means for both franchises. With Cyberpunk in full-swing, don’t expect to see any Witcher news in the very near future.
Via Polygon.
