Latest / The Game Business Show / CD Projekt Red: If you want a cost-driven development, you cannot make The Witcher 4

Transcript

CD Projekt Red: If you want a cost-driven development, you cannot make The Witcher 4 · The Game Business Show

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: We still believe there's ways to grow in terms of sales even.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: If you look at the,
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: for example, GTA 5,
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: what they sold,
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: these are very different numbers to what we have achieved with Witcher 3
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: or Cyberpunk.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: From like pure nerds being at the helm perspective,
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: we would love to do more because there's a lot of cool things we could do.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's just there's a limit that we can do,
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: exactly to your point,
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: because if we go larger, we just, everything's gonna fall apart.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: But I definitely wouldn't say this is a cost-driven development.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to have a cost-driven development,
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: and that's a proper thing,
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: by the way,
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: that's a proper business thinking for a lot of games,
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: you cannot make a game like The Witcher 4.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, I doubt if the development of GTA 6 was a cost-driven development.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm in fact 100% sure it wasn't.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: Hello and welcome to The Game Business Show.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: This week's episode is sponsored by Keyword Studios, the video game industry end-to-end partner.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's the service giant with over 13,000 staff from 26 countries.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: They help game makers build their games,
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: launch their games and grow their games At a global scale.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: When it comes to game development itself,
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: that means flexible production support that scales with ambition.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: So, they offer code development and engineering,
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: live operations, technical delivery, and a whole lot more.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: Keyword Studios helps game makers move faster,
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: solve complexity,
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: and keep production connected without losing sight of the games
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: that players are waiting for.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: To find out more,
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: head to the Keywords website,
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: or alternatively, click on the links in today's newsletter attached with this show.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: Speaking of which, let's get back to it.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: This week's show is with CD Projekt's joint CEO Mikhail Nowakowski.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: Now it was a big Gamescom for CD Projekt.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: Not only did it announce before the show that Witcher 4 will be coming out in 2028,
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: it also It also showed the first trailer for the upcoming DLC
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: to its 11-year-old game,
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: The Witcher 3,
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: called Songs of the Past,
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: and it announced The Witcher 3 Remastered,
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: a game that's coming out next month on September 29th,
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: and is free for all former The Witcher 3 owners.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's also coming to Switch 2 and Battle.net for Now CD Projekt has a lot going on.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: It just switched engines to Unreal Engine so it can develop more games.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's working on a new IP called Project Hado.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's working on a sequel to Cyberpunk.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's working on The Witcher 4.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's working on a multiplayer game set in the Witcher universe.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's also got a load of other small projects.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: Hello Michal, welcome to The Game Business Show.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: CD Projekt seem to be all over Gamescom this year.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: The remaster of The Witcher 3 is generating so much noise.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: But maybe I'm being naive.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: Making it available for free to people who already own the game.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: Surely they'd be happy to buy it.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: And what was the thinking there?
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: Well, first of all,
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: hello.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: Hello.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: And thank you for having me here.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: But I don't think it was ever a thought we even had.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: It was never a question we ask ourselves.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: The way we thought about it is like, it's an improvement.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's sort of a scene on which we wanted to introduce Songs of the Past as well
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: when we felt, okay,
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: if we're coming back to the game after such a long time,
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: literally,
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: I remember we were like going deeper and deeper into the development of Songs of
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: the Past with Fulls Theory.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: And we started chatting like, why don't we make the game more modern?
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Like everything feels like it was developed like 10 years ago.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: And that was really the beginning of the conversation.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: And we said, well,
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: because it was developed actually more than 10 years ago because
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: the development wasn't just a minute, you know, before 2015.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, when it came out, yeah.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: And we started chatting like, what could we do to improve it?
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: And it started like with small things like, okay, maybe let's fix this.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe let's fix that.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: And then it turned into this larger project
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: and we suddenly realized we actually have a remaster on our heads.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: But coming back to your original commercial question, we never thought about this way.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like the commercial bit of it is...
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the expansion, obviously.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: But the game, we really felt this is the CDPR way to gift it to the players who already own it.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, if you haven't, then you will have to purchase, you know, the game from scratch.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: But then we tried to sweeten the deal for you by adding,
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: you know, two expansions into the whole package.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: So it was just never a question we ask ourselves, to be honest.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: Did you think you'll be releasing an expansion to The Witcher 3 12 years after it came out?
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: Depends on when.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: When we took that decision, yes.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, no.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: But seriously, for a long time, no.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: We felt that The Witcher 3 is a closed book and we're never ever coming back to it.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: But a couple of, you know, happy accidents happen.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, We started a collaboration with Fool's Theory.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: They were supposed to work on The Witcher 1 [Remake].
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: We realized that needs a little bit more time because
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: of certain technology dependencies with Witcher 4.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: And then,
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: we actually had the idea for the third expansion a long time ago,
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: but it was,
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: in the drawer,
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: you know, And that led us to the answer, which was yes, let's give it a shot.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: It sounds maybe crazy, but let's try and give Geralt one more ride.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's where we are right now.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: Is it still doing like five million copies every year, The Witcher 3, even now?
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't say it's doing every year,
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: but for sure I think that's the way you can look at it when you compare the number
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: from like the last year.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: It did very well in the last period of time.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: It really is fluctuating depending on a lot
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: of stuff like what's animating it outside of the game, the sales periods and so on.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: But yes, it's true it did around five million copies last year.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: When you've got a game,
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: it's not just that,
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: Cyberpunk's also doing, I think, maybe even more than that every year.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: Does that take the pressure off, oh, we need to get The Witcher 4 done for this time?
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: Are you able to be a little bit more flexible with the timelines and things like that?
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: So, no,
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: we're not thinking about The Witcher 4 in a way like it has to be by XYZ or else,
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: you know, that's not the kind of pressure we're even allowing.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: To be put on ourselves.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: We want to be sure that the game is, you know, as good as we want it to be.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: There's certain ambition, which is not small, behind that game.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: And we want to be sure we get there.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: And we take the time we need to get there.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: So no, it doesn't take any pressure off.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't put any extra pressure,
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: but it doesn't
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: take any pressure off when it comes to the quality.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is something that the team is always pursuing as the first thing.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: But I just think back to...
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: I know, I've talked about it loads with you folks,
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: but Cyberpunk and the launch there,
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: and they felt like there was pressure to get that game out at that point,
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: and that had an impact upon what you had to do with your team,
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: and also had an impact, you know, the game wasn't quite right when it came out.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I was just wondering if because these games just keep on selling and selling
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: and selling,
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: you're able to go,
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: well, if it's not ready, we can just, you know, punt it back a bit.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: I think the situation was different in a way that,
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: first of all,
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: We were in a very peculiar moment in time as in this was the middle of the COVID
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: and honestly the way the tension builds within the team I think was
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: a little bit different than maybe if it wasn't the case.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: I don't mean to, you know, Put it all on COVID and so on, but it was a factor for sure.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: So what it does is like the team was getting exhausted in a different way.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: There was a lot of factors.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, there were people outside telling us you should launch already,
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: fans asking for the game to be launched.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: But the team itself also wanted to push it out of the door
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: because it was really tiring at that moment in time.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: And the decision to launch was for sure wrong, period.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: There's no denying it.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: There's no easy answer to,
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: you know, to like, I don't know, some magical investors or something like that.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: I've read a lot of that in the internet telling us, you have to release now or else.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: That was not the situation.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: It was much more complicated, much more psychological, I would even say.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know that.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: You're quite a big company now.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yes and no.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we're trying to think as, I mean, okay,
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: we're not a small company,
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: we're not a startup,
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: we're independent as we're not depending on any other entity,
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: but I for sure wouldn't call us indie.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: That would be for sure too far.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: That would be a lie.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: But we're of a certain size, for sure.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: At the same time, we're still at heart trying to think exactly like we did.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: So we're trying to all the time make sure that
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: a company doesn't lose its North Star,
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: its compass when it comes to both quality,
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: the way we try to service fans, the way we Want to tell our stories.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: This is all vital to the success.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: Like, in fact,
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: it's kind of like we have a little bit more toys to play with because of the size.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: And we feel, we hope we'll be able to tell more and better stories because of that.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: But we don't want to change the core of what's cool about the company
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: or what was cool about it, you know, when we were studying way back.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: Well, because we had Conrad on the show a few months ago talking about,
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: obviously, his new game.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: And he said that one of the reasons why he wanted to do Rebel Wars was
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: because he wanted to get back to being not a manager,
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: basically, and being part of a smaller team.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I guess that's the challenge, isn't it?
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: When you get bigger and bigger and bigger,
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: because your games are getting bigger, you're being more ambitious.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: You're one of the top game developers in the world.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: That requires a certain amount of, you know, resource.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: But also you want to somehow keep hold of what it is that makes CD Projekt special.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: How do you...
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: How do you do that?
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: Can you?
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it is true in a way that the larger the development team is,
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: I think the whole process is for sure different,
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: which is, I think, not just true for development of games.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's true for any team doing anything.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if it's 50 or 100 of you,
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: it's a very different story than if you're a 500 and then,
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: you know, another number like that's working externally with you.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: It just changes a lot.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I think for our team,
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: for the people working It changes a great deal in how they have to plan,
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: how they have to execute.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: In fact,
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: Cyberpunk was a big reason for us to rethink how the production should be run,
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: how we should make sure we look at certain processes, milestone pickup.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps what is the toleration for some,
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know,
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: bugs spilling over from one milestone to the other,
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: creating technology depth,
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: a lot of stuff like that was our consideration right after the Cyberpunk launch.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the first thoughts was like,
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: how do we rethink ourselves to make sure it doesn't happen again?
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: Or like minimizing the chances of anything even near like that.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: So it is tough, but like...
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: Lots of procedures sounds like a bank,
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know,
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: but like lots of good procedures that actually make sense are beneficial to the team
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: and as little procedures that will actually make you slow down or like cut
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: on creative or cut on risk taking because risk taking is super important to us.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: You may think, We're not taking risks anymore, but the company is taking risks all the time.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: The team is taking risks all the time.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: And we want to encourage people to take risks creatively because we don't want
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: to just build another Witcher 3 with just prettier something or better XYZ.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: We want to create a new game that is going to be like,
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: oh, it's different, but it's actually better.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's an improvement on what was there before.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: Same with Cyberpunk and so on.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: This is the ambition.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: So we feel that if we stay in the same spot, We're no longer going to be growing.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't mean growing in numbers.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, growing as a,
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: you know, as human beings, as human beings that want to create something different.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: And a reputation as the market leader, which means, you know,
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: you set the bar.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is what we're trying to tell ourselves,
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: like set the bar, push the bar even further.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, I'm a big believer that you earned that with your last release.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: So once we're going to launch and if we're going to be there, I'm happy to hear that from you.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: But before we do that, that's, you know, Do you see yourself becoming a bigger company?
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: I know a lot of developers these days are doing outsourcing if they need
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: to scale up rather than expanding.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, what's that for you?
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: Don't get me wrong, we still do outsource.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: We work with a lot of partners.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: Even the example of, you know, Songs of the Past is, you know, we work with Fool's Theory.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: We work with EXOFT out of Hungary on the technology.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of other partners, you know, involved here and there.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: But I don't think we have a goal of growing to some crazy number.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: I think the way we are thinking of growing is,
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: for sure, initially there was a plan to develop two games at the same time.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, at the same time, meaning...
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: Not launching,
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: back to back,
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: like we don't want to have Witcher 4 and then immediately right after,
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: you know, next month.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: Cyberpunk 2, that's not going to happen, but like Witcher 4 is here in development.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: Let's say it's almost ready to ship.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: Cyberpunk is here and then we're At some point, we want to have the third.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: Haydar, of course, is going to be the next one, and it's somewhere at the beginning.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's already, you can call it development, but it's really early on.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, this is done.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: This goes here.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: This goes here.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: Another Witcher goes here.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: This is more the way we're thinking,
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: but it's free, isolated teams with clear leadership, with clear vision.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a certain capacity beyond which I think we cannot go if we want
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: to be sure that we deliver at a certain quality, at a certain level.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: But we still believe there's ways to grow in terms of sales even.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: If you look at,
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: for example, GTA V,
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: what they sold,
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: these are very different numbers to what we have achieved,
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: which are free or cyberpunk.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: So if you look at them, there is still room for growth.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, wow.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: 65 million is not quite enough for you.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's not what I'm saying.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: No, I know.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm joking.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we're super happy with that.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: But of course,
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just saying that if you're asking us from like
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: the pure business growth perspective, we can do more games.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: Although I would not count on us being, I don't know, annual launch or something like that.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's not going to happen.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: And we can sell more if we do our job well.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: Talking about three games internally,
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: but you've also got all these partner games that you're working on that you oversee.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: Is there a risk maybe of overstretching or overextending?
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: You mean overstretching as in like stretching ourselves or like...
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe losing focus a little bit.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's always the risk.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's always the threat.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: the amount of game companies I've spoken to over the years that decided,
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: oh, we're going to expand and we're going to make more games.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: And then what happened was they ended up hurting the core games.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: The new games didn't really work out.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: They ended up refocusing around the core.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm always alert to that risk.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: There is always a risk for sure.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: And we actually...
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: I think kill a lot of ideas that we have and they will never happen
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: or maybe sometime in the future because we believe we cannot execute them at
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: a proper level
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: or with a proper focus.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: So every collaboration,
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: every partnership we make or every development we make,
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: we go into that with the thought whether we can actually deliver on that,
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: whether we can support it or not.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: There's definitely no partnerships which we would take,
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: even external,
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: especially external I would actually even say where we would just say,
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the Witcher or here's Cyberpunk.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: Do whatever you want.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like the important bit is for it to be, you know, tomorrow.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's not going to happen.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like every partnership we invest ourselves.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: We invest our people being part of the process,
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: especially in the beginning,
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: making sure that the other side,
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: for example,
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: understands what the Witcher or what the Cyberpunk is overseeing those things.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: We actually even have like a franchise team specifically working just on that,
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: just to make sure that,
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: for example, it is within the lore, it sticks to like the story continuation.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: Continuum or the lore continuum,
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: that the visuals fall within what we think is fitting for,
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: you know, The Witcher or Cyberpunk and so on and on and on.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: So a lot of scrutiny goes into that.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: We could actually,
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: from like pure nerds being at the helm perspective,
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: we would love to do more because there's a lot of cool things we could do.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's just there's a limit that we can do exactly to your point because
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: if we go larger witches, everything's going to fall apart.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: The move to Unreal Engine,
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: that's part of this sort of making sure that,
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: you know, you can do multiple projects, right?
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: Isn't that part of the thinking behind that technology move?
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that was part of it because the thing with Red Engine was it was actually
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: a very good engine.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: It was, we built it in the beginning because we did not see in the market Any engine
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: that was fitting for the kind of games we wanted to make,
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: which was open world, you know, choices and consequences, story driven.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: We felt there was nothing that could actually deliver on that.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: When we first had a glimpse of, you know, UE5 and what was...
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: What was the promise of what is going to be capable?
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: That was when we started thinking like,
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: what if we had a strategic partnership with guys like Epic who are going to be,
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: they're always by nature of what they do,
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: also Fortnite and all that,
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: they're always going to be taking care of like the foundation of what the engine is
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: and we can build our tools.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm super oversimplifying,
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: but we can build our tools specific to what we want to do and co-develop engine here
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: and there with them in some specific places.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that's going to allow us to bring out more games.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of with Red Engine,
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: what was the case,
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: we had to,
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: very few people know that actually,
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: but we had to build the engine from scratch for every game we made.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like,
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: you were taking the Witcher 3 engine and then like,
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: you know, tweak it Here and there, and it was ready to run Cyberpunk.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: You had to change so much, it's crazy.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: So we found ourselves investing small years into first doing the technology,
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: and then in the end you were finding yourself developing technology next to
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: the development of the game.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: As well,
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: which is always the case to some,
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: to some extent, of course, but like it was more so than we wished it to be.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: So the idea was,
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: and of course, we're still ahead of proving whether that's going to be the case.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: We believe, yes,
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: we believe we're on the right path and Epic's been a great partner so far
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: that we'll be able to deliver more by building foundation,
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: on Unreal Engine and then making more games like the switch from one game to
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: the other should be a little bit easier.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: Are you confident you can still keep that uniqueness to your games,
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: even when using a more off-the-shelf engine like Unreal?
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: Honestly, yes.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that was a big question we were asking ourselves in the beginning because
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: the visuals,
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: pushing the envelope with,
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: how the games look, feel, the cinematic feel of it all was very, very important.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: You could,
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: I think,
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: especially see that with,
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: you know, Cyberpunk, which was the last game, the last full game we launched.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: And that was like a big question mark.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: When we were in the R&D phase of thinking,
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: trying to think outside the box of whether UE5 is going to be a good fit or not,
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: we really asked ourselves all of these questions.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: And the answer was,
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: in some cases, it's not yet, but together with Epic, we can bring it To that point.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: And actually,
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: what we did with the tech demo,
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: as we called it,
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: Project Silver,
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: the one we dropped in Orlando during the Unreal Fest,
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: was a little bit of a showcase of how we're planning to get there.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I know a lot of people when we made that switch were asking questions,
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: oh, they're going to be another Unreal-looking game.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: There's a saying like that.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: But I think we're not going to be.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: I think we really are going to be able to differentiate ourselves.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: People are going to feel this is the CDPR game still.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know,
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: technology under the hood is actually going to be irrelevant to them from,
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: like, the pure fan perspective.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: I don't even know if this is important to you.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: Does it help speed up development in any way?
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: In the beginning, no, because you have to make a switch.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: You have to change a lot of, you know, pipelines.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: You have to switch people from, you know, you have to build tools from scratch.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: You have those tools,
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: for example,
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: for quest building, for Red Engine, and you have to build it from ground.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, for UE5, that's a big shift.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: But once you get into that and you build it for The Witcher and then you tweak it,
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: here and there actually tweaks are still not insignificant,
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: but still easier for,
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: for Cyberpunk,
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: between Cyberpunk and The Witcher,
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: then you're,
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: or I wouldn't say on the rails,
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: but you're definitely on a faster path than you were when we were making the,
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: you know, jumps from one engine to another between genres, actually, and the IPs.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: I ask, because obviously a lot of AAA companies that we talk to,
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: not all of them,
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: but some of them,
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: they're trying to work out how to bring down that cost of development,
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: which is often how long the game takes to make really as people plus time.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you have to worry too much about that,
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: but is it something that Is it a focus for you?
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: We are, of course, cost conscious.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's not unimportant.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we're a business in the end,
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: so I would lie if I said that it doesn't matter how much the game costs, but I,
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: to be honest,
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: the first thing we We always look at is whether the quality we're meeting is there
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: and period,
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: whether we're meeting the expectations of what the fans are expecting from
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: the next installment of The Witcher or not.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: This is like the dominant thing we're looking at.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I definitely wouldn't put cost in the number one position, as weird as it may sound.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: We're still cost conscious.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: We're still trying to make sure we're keeping within the boundaries.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: Or if it's exceeding, then we sit down and think what it means for everything pretty much.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: But I definitely wouldn't say this is a cost-driven development.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to have a cost-driven development,
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: and that's a proper thing,
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: by the way,
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: that's a proper business thinking for a lot of games,
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: you cannot make a game like The Witcher 4.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, I doubt if the development of GTA 6 was a cost-driven development.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm in fact 100% sure it wasn't.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: I think the philosophy might be very similar
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: in many ways.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: I'll change the subject a little bit because the last thing I've been playing
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: from CD Projekt has been Cyberpunk on Switch 2.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: Which I thought was a remarkable job.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't know, I don't know what success looks like for that game.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: For the Switch, you mean?
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the Switch 2 version, yeah.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: The success, well,
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: we were the best-selling third-party game on Switch for a while,
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: I think, when we launched.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: In fact,
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: we were overselling uh quite a few nintendo games uh their own games uh with
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: the exception of course of mario kart which was a mario mario kart b
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: and c it was also bundled with consoles so yeah and
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: and quite deservedly I mean this is this is an awesome game
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: yeah but uh
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: I think
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: that was a success on its own.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: We were very happy,
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: by the way,
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: with the sales numbers on the platform, made the money on it, broke even.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: We're in the positive.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: It is a peculiar platform because it's,
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: it was at its launch moment,
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: so the install base was not as huge, so we never expected numbers of, I don't know.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: Steam or something like that.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: But we did very well.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: And actually the game continues to sell.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: We're happy.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: And the most important bit is that, you know, the players are happy.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: I believe Nintendo was very happy as well.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: Everything we heard from them was, you know, was praised.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: They were also, you know, very impressed with how the game performed on the hardware.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the special features of Cyberpunk on Switch 2 and so on.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: You know, wait and see for The Witcher now.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: I looked at it and I thought, it's gonna be, you've got, not so much concern about Cyberpunk.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: I can see Nintendo were pushing it a lot as well and it looked amazing.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, you've got Mario Kart bundled with it.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: If you've got the Zelda games, they're nicely upgraded and improved.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: A bunch of games that were upgraded and improved.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's backwards compatible, unlike the Switch one.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: And there's all that kind of stuff that I thought probably might impact the amount
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: of games people buy.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: But it was good to see, glad to hear it's done well.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: This was a bit of a test for us because this was literally the first time ever
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: for us to be on the platform day to day long.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: So we kind of didn't know what to expect.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: But we liked the hardware so much and,
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: the pitch that Nintendo had overall for the whole ecosystem that we decided
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: to give it a shot.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it paid off.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: We're happy.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you're generally very in with the platform holders,
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: Nintendo and PlayStation and Xbox,
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: but they're having a bit of a troubled time at the moment.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: We've seen the prices rising as a result of all of the component shortages.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: Sales are falling towards the end of the cycle.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: And there's gossip around the delay for the next generation, though.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: How are you feeling about consoles?
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: Are you worried?
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not worried.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, of course, I'm not a specialist on the business.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: I never run, you know, a console business, probably never will.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: So we're only watching as the participants of the market, you know, on the sidelines, so to say.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: Of course.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, you know, all you said is true.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: I think from the hardware manufacturer perspective,
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: the rising prices of memory are a big issue for everybody,
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: to be honest, for PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo as well.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: And it's objective.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it is what it is.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: I think consoles are still necessary as the market participants to kind of broaden
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: the audience on the casual or semi-casual level.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's important.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's something for everyone.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: I think actually in many ways we live in days when gaming is the most accessible in
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: the Every possible way as it ever was.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: If you go back to like 80s,
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: and try to plug in your ZX81 or something like that,
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: or Atari 800,
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: 2600 console or something,
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: it was a very different experience,
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: especially the computer as to what it is right now with just plug and play consoles
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: and what they are capable of.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it's important for broadening of the audience to have an easy to plug in
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: and enjoy, you know, gaming from the get go box.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm a big believer that I'm going to weather the storm.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: But like the pricing, this is the objective challenge.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: And what are the rumors?
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: We hear them just as you did, you know, of the next gen being delayed.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: We hear them.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if they're true or not.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: Does it matter to you?
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: Does it make a difference?
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the way we look at it is we... How we reach the gamers is a little bit irrelevant.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's the content that is important and we believe that if the content is the king
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: and if the content is right, people will find a way to play it.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, if when we launch PS5, you know, Xbox Series XS, you know, and...
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: What people are playing the games on, we're going to be there.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to try and find a business model that's going to work
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: for us commercially,
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: that's going to be fine for the players,
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: that's going to make them fine with what they paid for,
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: how they paid for it and so on.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's it.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you ask the dev team,
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: they will always, always have an answer that's going to be simple.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: Give us as much power as we can because we want to show the best stuff.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's the way they're wired.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: But then again, they're also realistic.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: They know what's in the market.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that might sometimes,
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: if something gets delayed,
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: like the next gen,
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: if this is really the case,
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: it could be the case that some of the ideas they had might be put on the shelf
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: and left for something that's in the future.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: But I guess that's just the reality.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: We have to adjust.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: We're not worried about the commercial side of it.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: I think consoles are here to stay.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a big believer.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: I am too.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, Matthew Bromberg from Unity was on our show last week, and he said...
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: I know him.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and he made a whole thing about, yes,
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: console's going through a hard time at the moment.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_01: Some of it is the pricing,
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_01: some of it is the Roblox generation upgrade into console, some of that.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: But really, it comes down to games.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: And hopefully the pricing's temporary and that sold itself over time.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: I seriously hope so, yes.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: And then you've got, if you,
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: you know, people make some amazing console games, people will come out and buy them.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: we've had this amazing year at cinema where everyone's going to the cinema again
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: and it turned out that All you needed to do was give people a reason to go to
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: the cinema.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: I was actually going to literally say that.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: I used that in some conversation today.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's, uh, look at, you know, at the Odyssey.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: You have the right story told in the right way, done in the right way.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then you suddenly have people show up in huge numbers and break the records.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: And, uh, you know, suddenly all the people who are saying, you know, cinema is dead.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, okay, then what about that?
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: Even if you go beyond, below that billion dollar level.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: No, of course, I use the most extreme example, of course, you know.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: Even like Wuthering Heights,
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: which did,
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'm also, I wasn't a massive fan of that film, but it did very, very well.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a gothic romance.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: And then you've got horror movies doing extremely well.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: Mary, and all of these, it just, anyway, we're not here talking about film.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's all about making a game that's a great game,
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: has its audience, makes sense budget-wise.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, like, spend what you're aiming for is another thing.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then, of course, discoverability can be a massive issue.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: I think this is the biggest challenge in the video games right now, if you ask me.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's, like, probably the biggest problem of 95% of the market.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe, like a lot of people in the market, for sure, this is an issue.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: I'm asked a question that's a risky question.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: The Witcher 4 coming in 2028, right?
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: That means apparently you're not going to be able to have a disc version on PlayStation 5.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: We don't know what's going to be the case.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: We know what PlayStation has announced.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we have no influence on the policies of the first parties, to be honest.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: The discs for the first parties, including PlayStation, have to be manufactured in their own.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: So if they stop manufacturing indeed by 2028, then yes.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: But what we're focusing on, we're big fans of people having access to
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: Tangible, collectible things.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: We're nerds ourselves and we like that.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: We always supported that.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: So whatever is the case, we're going to be for sure having a box.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to have a box that's going to have some, you know, some feelies in it.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: Something that's going to,
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: you know, be something you're going to be wanting to open up and enjoy.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: But we have no influence actually on what
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: is the case here.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: No, because I know you love physical because that's what we did with the Switch 2 version.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_01: I know all the fancy speclets editions you got.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm kind of like, I'm not, Maybe it's just me personally.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not necessarily too worried about the lack of a disc or not.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_01: But I do like to have, I've got the Resident Evil Requiem watch on.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: I do like to have a physical item.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: That's just my own perspective.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_01: I was going to ask actually though, changing the subject.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_01: I asked this question before, many years ago, but I've not asked it since.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: You've got the TV shows, The Witcher and the Edgerunners.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_01: How much of an impact, how significant is that now?
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I know that's not just you, but it's like it's impacting your games.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: How significant is that now?
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: You mean like right now, this very moment?
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: So this very moment, not much because there's no new season or...
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: And there's an important difference, like The Witcher show,
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: we're not tied to that in any way.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this was the show that's been done between Andrzej Sapkowski and
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: the deal he had signed with Netflix, so we're not really involved in that.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: We did exchange some Easter eggs and stuff like that, but that's not our doing, so to say.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: We did, however, benefit for sure when the show launched.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: We did see the spike of interest,
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: especially around the season one of people coming in and checking out the game,
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: buying it and so on.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: With animation and with cyberpunk in general,
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: this is a little bit of a different story because we control the TV,
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: film, animation rights ourselves.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: So we orchestrated Edrunners and the upcoming Edrunners releasing on Netflix
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: on October 20th, as far as I recall.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: That actually had a massive impact as well.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: We saw a big surge of sales for when we combined it because we did it so that we had
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: a patch with items and elements and some teeny tiny,
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: you know, quests a bit from related to the Adronis TV show.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: we put it in the game and that created like this perfect moment,
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: I think, for the fans.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we're fans of things ourselves and we know...
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's why it was very important for us with The Edge Runners that the show is
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: of really top quality and we were very
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: I
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: mean, it's not just, you know, we put it out there and it's there.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_00: It has meaning both for the fans because they enjoy it
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: and it actually creates some commercial, you know, feedback as well.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_01: Well, with games taking so long to make,
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: I imagine it also Allows you to,
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: you know, keep providing stories and moments for fans.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, no.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we're all, exactly.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we're all about creating those moments, you know.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: In fact,
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think we thought about it this way exactly,
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: but because of how we were doing that,
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: I was told by someone not so long ago that you guys are kind of live operating
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: a single player game.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I laughed a little bit, but I was like, actually, that person has a point.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we are kind of doing that.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: I just never thought about it this way.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_00: But we create those moments and you bring in new people,
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: new cohorts of people who are not maybe,
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: or forgot about the game, but it reminded them of that and come and check it out.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, we have new people enjoying the game.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and you do it slightly differently to someone like maybe IO Interactive,
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_01: which obviously have their little challenges they put in the game all the time,
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_01: but it's a single-player game, Hitman.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe even No Man's Sky, which I guess is an element to it.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: Those games that are living on and on and on,
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_01: they keep performing really well, they keep selling, they keep appealing to people.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_01: They're sort of a weird single-player-as-a-service sort of thing that's happening.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_01: I don't mean that in a sort of grubby way.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_01: I mean that in a very, you're just keeping it alive.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_01: And that's how you have someone like The Witcher 3,
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_01: 12 years in getting, well,
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_01: 11 years at the moment, but 12 years when the DLC drops, it's still getting updated.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_01: That's true.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's remarkable.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to ask one final question.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_01: And it's very, I ask this every time, but you kind of may have answered it earlier on.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_01: So, but it is, where would you like to see CD Projekt in Should I say five or ten years?
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, honestly,
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: we actually have a plan that's a ten-year plan and we kind of update it internally
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: on a rolling basis.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, you know, I'd say the nearest five years is kind of specific.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: The further away you go from that, it's a little bit more of a guessing game, I would say.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: We definitely want to be a company that is able
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: to successfully launch two big games,
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: like work on them at the same time,
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: kind of like what I was saying, you know, before and launch them successfully.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, to the point that fans really think these are worth being you.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: We want to be the company that is also growing its entertainment footprint in terms
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: of like animation and TV shows that are executed at the top notch level
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: and are not seen as like, oh,
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_00: they just slapped a license on it and,
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: We shot a movie or TV series and it's there and then it's forgotten,
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: but it becomes a classic of a genre on its own.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: This is for sure a desire.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: Same thing for comic books or whatever else we do in
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: the pop culture location-based entertainment.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: We like to be in all these.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_00: All of these things to be worthy on their own.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: But the key thing is,
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: of course,
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: games like being able to launch two free games
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: within certain relatively short period of time.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: Again, I don't mean year by year.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's never going to be the goal.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's for sure where we just would like to tell more cool stories to the people,
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: given the time,
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: on this earth we have,
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: which sounds very philosophically ingrained, but that's actually true.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, if you only make one game at a time, you haven't got that many left in you, right?
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: That was actually big thinking,
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: when we were sitting down and talking, like,
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: everybody has a biology,
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: built into them,
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: and we were like,
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: if we keep doing things the way we do it,
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: and we have ideas,
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: we have a lot of ideas,
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: we're going to make only XYZ because we're going to,
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: before we're going to retire or, like, naturally retire, you know, from this place.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: So how can we do more but not compromise on the quality?
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: This was, like, the predominant thought.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: And then we started thinking, okay, so what's the business around that?
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: But I was like, really at the beginning, how can we do more, but at a quality?
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: So this is my biggest wish.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'd like us to look back and say, okay, we did it.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: We told,
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, two,
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: three stories instead of just one within that moment,
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_00: and all of them were top-notch.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for coming, joining us on the show.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_01: Good luck with the DLC launch and the remaster launch and the, and the Witcher 4, all of that.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_01: You say not every year, but here we are.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_00: There's quite a few things coming up, yes.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: And we still have some cards up our sleeve going forward.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_00: Cannot comment on exactly details, but we like teasing people.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_01: Brilliant.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_01: Well, thank you so much for your time and good luck with it.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's it for today's episode of The Game Business Show.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you to Mikael there for joining us.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_01: We'll be back with more news, analysis, insight and interviews in the days and weeks ahead.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_01: if you want to make sure you don't miss an episode,
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: you just need to go to thegamebusiness.com,
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_01: put in your email address and every single time we do a new show,
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_01: you will get an email about it.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_01: But that's it for us today.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_01: Until next time, thank you for tuning in.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_01: What is the greatest RPG that isn't a CD Projekt RPG?
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: There's two ones which I would put for different reasons.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: One is Skyrim, which I had a lot of fun with because of its sandbox.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's a very non-city project game.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: Emphasis and story is in a very different spot than with our games,
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: but I had a lot of fun with it.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: And the other one, which Here's a cult favourite.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: If you could be the CEO of any other company, it doesn't have to be games, what would it be?
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's interesting.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_00: I've always loved space exploration and interesting facts and trivia about...
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: In fact,
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: when I was a kid,
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: I was hoping we're going to be,
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: you know, by this time, pretty much, you know, based on the moon, based on Mars.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it's a kid in me speaking.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: I would say SpaceX,
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_00: not because I have some humongous knowledge of how to run a space rocket company.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_00: PC or console?
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have the division in my head, because I play on everything.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_00: I find myself playing some games more on the PC,
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: and then there's some games I'm going to play on the PlayStation,
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: some stuff I'm going to play on Xbox,
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_00: and there's a lot of stuff I play, especially with my children.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: I've got three boys on Switch.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: I genuinely couldn't choose.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_01: What is the greatest album of all time?
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure if it's the greatest,
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_00: but the one that sits in my heart is the Blood Sugar Sex Magic
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_00: from Red Hot Chili Peppers.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, really?
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_00: I just have, like, super fond memories of that
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_01: moment in my life.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_01: If you could make a game based on any IP in the world,
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_01: this is you personally, not let's say CD Projekt, what would it be?
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_00: I would probably go for Dungeons & Dragons.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a big D&D fan since forever and that would be my choice.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_00: Actually,
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_00: if we went deeper with the top games we played,
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_00: the previous question,
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: I would move towards the boulders gates, planescapes of this world.