Cyberpunk 2077 "Much Greater" in Magnitude Than The Witcher, Dev Says
The game is "even better, even bigger, even more revolutionary," according to CD Projekt Red.
Speaking today during The Witcher developer CD Projekt Red's latest earnings briefing, management discussed upcoming RPG Cyberpunk 2077 and did not hold back in their enthusiasm for it. According to DualShockers, studio head Adam Badowski said The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt raised the bar, meaning Cyberpunk 2077 needs to be "even better, even bigger, even more revolutionary" than what the company originally set out to do.
Badowski said the game is still "a long ways away" from launch, and further stressed that CD Projekt Red still has "a lot of work to do" to make it a "truly outstanding game."
The executive went on to say that Cyberpunk 2077 is a "huge game" that has a magnitude "much greater" than The Witcher series. Overall, CD Projekt Red has "amazingly large ambitions" for this game.
To reach this goal, CD Projekt president Adam Kicinski said the studio plans to at least double its headcount, which currently stands at around 400 people. Not all will work on Cyberpunk 2077, of course, as the team members will be split into four distinct groups, some of which will "penetrate new gaming segments," he said.
Cyberpunk 2077 was first announced in October 2012. There have been conflicting reports about when it will launch. One said the role-playing game, developed with the help of board game designer Mike Pondsmith, is not coming until 2017 at the earliest; another, more recent report claimed the title may launch at the end of 2016. The former appears to be true, as CD Projekt said today in its earnings briefing that the game is scheduled to arrive sometime in the 2017-2021 window.
At the end of 2015, Kicinski alluded to the growing ambition of Cyberpunk 2077 and said it needs to be "even more successful."
"The project is even more ambitious than we first planned (...) we need to create a game that will be even more successful," he said on Polish TV station. "We have a long way ahead of us to reach the biggest commercial successes in the world."
At the time, Kicinski went on to say that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was a big success with 6 million copies sold against an $81 million budget. The game was a "good investment," according to CD Projekt Red management, but at the same time, The Witcher 3 was not a worldwide chart-topper for the full year.
"Sure, many people consider The Witcher 3 to be the best game in the world [in 2015], but this is not a game that broke any sales record," he explained.
Cyberpunk 2077 puts players into a "dark future" in 2077 where advanced technologies have become "both the salvation and the curse of humanity." The game promises a nonlinear story designed for "mature" players and is set in the metropolis of Night City. It was also revealed that Cyberpunk 2077 will feature sandbox elements, though this has not been specified.
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