As CD Projekt Red continues to grow with projects like The Witcher 4 and Cyberpunk 2 in the works, some industry veterans are worrying that it’s all becoming a bit too ambitious to make sense financially in the long run.
Mark Darrah, BioWare veteran who was co-director of Dragon Age: Origins and executive producer of Anthem, shares those concerns as part of an interview in the Summer Eternal Anthology (as reported by Rock Paper Shotgun recently).
He first discusses the likes of GTA 6 and how its sheer size has affected the video game industry, with developers and publishers falling into the trap of hoping to make the next Grand Theft Auto.
Should some move away from that dream, the future could be brighter. “If that all goes away, then you’ll get a bunch of room to make it work with titles that need to sell 3-4 million units,” as Darrah says. Think Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. “That’s much more attractive.”
And, why wouldn’t it be? “I don’t want to be working on something like GTA, where if this thing doesn’t sell 50 million units, it’s going to lose money,” after all. “That’s insane.”
He worries about CD Projekt Red in particular, in this context. Darrah feels the studio is now part of that huge GTA-like game space.
“Their games now need to sell 15, 20 million units to make money,” the former dev says. “That’s a really dangerous place to be.” I suppose he’s not wrong there, either. It’s never easy to make that much back, even with an IP as big as The Witcher. Plus, it’s not a situation one would want to be in, regardless.
I’m not too concerned about CD Projekt Red’s success myself, but it does make you wonder.
Heck, the company is currently working on a downright plethora of new games, from The Witcher 4 to Cyberpunk 2 to the ever-mysterious Project Hadar, which has just now moved on from its world-building phase to some prototype testing. There are loads of upcoming CD Projekt Red games, put simply, that much is for certain.