Top Story
CD Projekt RED adopts “dual franchise model” for The Witcher and Cyberpunk
Geralt of Rivia might have retired to his vineyard but CD Projekt RED isn’t putting the franchise out to pasture quite yet: The Polish studio has unveiled their “dual franchise model” based around The Witcher and Cyberpunk.
The continuing strong sales of The Witcher 3 has convinced CD Project RED that there’s plenty of hungry fans out there: “Our financial results for the first half of the year again was mainly affected by sales of The Witcher 3, which remains strong. This further confirms our belief that investing in top quality games pays off,” said chief financial officer Piotr Nielubowicz.
”Life might be black and white to you witchers, but to us common folk it’s all just shades of grey.”
“Managing two separate major franchises (The Witcher/Cyberpunk), along with several independent development teams, enables the company to conduct parallel on several projects and smoothens its longterm release schedule,” he continued in the report.
There’s no indication what sort of Witcher games the studio will make in the future, but CD Project RED stresses the important of investing in the growth of Gwent: The Witcher Card Game. They also released Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales in October last year as a stand-alone single player component for Gwent, though they admit sales were weaker than hoped since the game was exclusive to GOG.
CD Projekt RED’s new big thing is – of course – the eagerly anticipated Cyberpunk 2077, which they intend to keep updating with new content they way they did for The Witcher 3. The studio is also deep in R&D to figure out how to add a strong multiplayer component, but their highest priority remains the single-player campaign.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Complete Edition launches on Nintendo Switch October 15th.
Time For A Quick Daily Quiz?
Who made the first Blair Witch game?
- Terminal Reality (Ghostbusters)
- Ritual Entertainment (SiN)
- Bloober Team (Layers of Fear)
- Human Head Studios (Prey)
The answer will be revealed at the end of this issue!
News Bits
Supermassive Games already teasing Man of Medan follow-up for 2020
This week’s The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan is only the first part of an ongoing series of horror stories from Supermassive Games – and they’re already teasing their next one.
It’s called The Dark Pictures: Little Hope and will be out next year. The teaser trailer visits a town called Little Hope and follows Andrew and Angela – presumably the two protagonists – as they get lost in the woods.
Sci-fi MMO PlanetSide Arena jetpacks onto Steam Early Access September 19
A sequel to 2012’s PlanetSide 2 is almost ready to blast onto Steam Early Access. The sci-fi MMO PlanetSide Arena from developer Daybreak Game Company will become available to brave testers September 19, with a full multi-platform launch following in 2020.
Early Access starts with “Squads (12-player groups) and Teams (3-player groups) in matches of 300+ players.” Check out the Early Access FAQ for more.
Daily Fact
SEGA Dreamcast really phoned it in for online gaming
When you think of game consoles today they are synonymous with online services like Xbox Live and PlayStation Network, with even Nintendo getting in on it more with Switch Online. However the first home console to try and achieve an online network presence was SEGA Dreamcast.
The Dreamcast was the first to include an actual built-in modem to connect to the Internet via a telephone cable for that dial-up goodness. SEGA beat the competition to the punch by trying to set up an online ecosystem called SegaNet, and though it failed in the end it did help pave the way for Xbox and PlayStation to get in on this gimmick of ‘online multiplayer’. Obviously it was just a passing fancy…
