CD Projekt has Its Sights Set on the Future

21 Feb, 2012

With success following in the footsteps of The Witcher 2‘s PC release, and the anticipated Xbox 360 release, CD Projekt Red already has its sights set on the future. There’s two more titles already in the pipeline for the Polish developer, and they’ve said that it’s going to be for next-gen consoles and PCs as well.

“We are definitely starting for new consoles,” said managing director Adam Badowski in an interview with Eurogamer this past week. “I can tell you we are and we were focusing on powerful gaming rigs. We’re going to do something amazing, so we need extra processors.

“It will be multi-platform game, so the multi-release at the same time. But if you are talking about leading platform, we will use most powerful, just because it can give us the freedom of creation. And it’s cool to develop something special, new — better than others on the market. It’s our goal.”

“The market is ready for something new, for something faster, more powerful,” added head of marketing Michal Platkow-Gilewski.

Scheduled for 2014 or 2015, we should expect to be wowed. The Witcher 2 has already cast a spell over gamers that have been graced by its presence, and there’s no reason to believe that CD Projekt Red won’t deliver on their promise. Asked about what kind of games these show-stoppers will be, Badowski said that they’re sticking to what they do best — the RPG genre.

Will it stay in the realm of high fantasy, which the studio has proven to be their forte? Maybe, maybe not. Badowski teased that it may stray into another universe altogether. “I cannot say right now,” he said. “It will be a mature RPG and story-driven game. I cannot say in what universe — maybe high fantasy, maybe not.”

So how does one start in on creating something that’s going to be run by a console that hasn’t been revealed yet? You plan ahead, and you do it meticulously. Badowski said that they had already started developing the new tech, and have created quite the backlog of new features. “You probably know that we’ve decided to develop our new engine that is called Red Engine, so we’ve prepared a long-term plan for that engine,” said Badowski. “So we are yes, yes we are developing some features just for the new…”

“We are anticipating what the new generations of consoles may be,” added Platkow-Gilewski.

And it won’t just be for consoles. While the studio has started work on next-gen engines and specs with their upcoming titles, both Badowski and Platkow-Gilewski said that they don’t exactly have dev kits yet. They’re just playing the song by ear at this point.

When it comes to the new IPs, CD Projekt have already put together two separate teams for them. Unfortunately, nobody from The Witcher has involvement. Whether this is a good or bad thing remains to be seen, but the studio certainly knows what it’s doing. “The second team is just a few guys right now, because we decided not to split the original Witcher team in two parts, but to hire new staff, and we’ve just started.” said Badowski. “The second project is during the early pre-production stage, so we don’t need the huge team for that.”

If the original Witcher team isn’t getting split, then the safest assumption to make is yet another Witcher title. Trilogies, they’re just all the rage these days. Platkow-Gilewski put that one quickly to rest though. “Frankly speaking, not yet,” he replied. “Give us some time; I’m sure we will announce it pretty fast in the following months, but we want to do everything in the proper order. And right now we are focused on polishing and bringing the Enhanced Edition to Xbox 360 and PC.

“Especially as on Xbox 360 we don’t have the first installment of The Witcher. So we want to slowly enter the market, educate our gamers/customers — we don’t want to [talk] too much about our future projects for now.”

It wouldn’t be a far-fetched guess to say that perhaps the original Witcher may find its way onto a console. Back in November, the studio had teased that at least one of their titles-in-progress would be revealed early this year, but Platkow-Gilewski gave the diplomatic “quit asking” answer when prodded about its content: “You are unpacking the gift, you know,” he said. “Really soon we will inform the community about our surprise. It will come pretty soon, in the following two months.”

Whether it’s set in space, high fantasy, or the real world, all we know is that CD Projekt Red has some big plans for the future, and they can’t wait to share it with the world. Is it another Witcher, or is it something else entirely? We hope we get all the answers soon.

For the full interview, head over to Eurogamer.