The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was critically and commercially one of 2015’s biggest gaming successes, but CD Projekt Red are convinced Cyberpunk 2077 can be bigger. In a recent interview, the studio’s CEO shed some light on the plans for their new IP, and talked of how the success of Geralt’s latest adventure has given them more resource to play with in this new venture.
Speaking after the studio scooped another award for The Witcher 3, Marcin Iwinski described how Cyberpunk 2077 will be “more ambitious on every single front, in the development and on the marketing side.” This is a huge – and exciting – claim, given the scope and scale of that most recent success.
But it’s not just CD Projekt Red’s latest game that will have lofty ambitions. As Iwinski explains, the studio has set some impressive goals for themselves as well, with the likes of Rockstar Studios being lined up as inspiration:
The Witcher finished with 80 people, The Witcher 3 finished with 250, so Cyberpunk 2077 will probably be even more. Don’t think about scale in terms of us doing 20 projects; no, we’ll focus, we’ll focus on certain things… We don’t want to be a 10 project studio. The Rockstar model is nice[…] what Rockstar is doing is amazing. It’s not like, ‘We have to ship a game or we may not hit our financial goals.’ It’s, ‘Here’s GTA V, and by the way, it’s the best game ever made.’ We’re all looking forward to Red Dead Redemption 2 because we know they’ll show something and we’ll be like, ‘Oh my god.’ But we still have to get there. We have to prove it. The Witcher 3 is a good example, but we have to keep on delivering.
So ‘ambition’ is the word of the week over at CD Projekt Red; if they are able to emulate just their own recent success when Cyberpunk 2077 rolls around, we could be in for a seriously impressive game. And if they do manage to hit Rockstar status with it? Well, let’s just say we can all dream of that day.