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

0:00Michal Nowakowski: We still believe there's ways to grow in terms of sales even. If you look at the, for example, GTA 5, you know, what they sold, these are very different numbers to what we have achieved with Witcher 3 or Cyberpunk. From like pure nerds being at the helm perspective, we would love to do more because there's a lot of cool things we could do. It's just there's a limit that we can do exactly to your point because if we go larger, we just, everything's going to fall apart. But I definitely wouldn't say this is a cost-driven development. If you want to have a cost-driven development and that's a proper thing, by the way.

0:30Michal Nowakowski: That's a proper business thinking for a lot of games. You cannot make a game like The Witcher 4. By the way, I doubt if the development of GTA 6 was a cost-driven development. I'm in fact 100 % sure it wasn't.

0:45Hello and welcome to The Game Business Show. This week's episode is sponsored by Keyword Studios, the video game industry end-to-end partner. It's the service giant with over 13 ,000 staff from 26 countries. They help game makers build their games launch their games and grow their games at a global scale when it comes to game development itself that means flexible production support that scales with ambition so they offer code development and engineering live operations technical delivery and a whole lot more keyword studios helps game makers move faster solve complexity and keep production connected without losing sight of the games that players are waiting for to find out more head to the keywords website or alternatively click on the links in today's newsletter attached with this show speaking of which let's get back to it this week's show is with cd projects joint ceo michael nowakowski now it was a big games comp for cd project not only did it announce before the show that witcher 4 will be coming out in 2028 it also showed the first trailer for the upcoming dlc to its 11 year old game the witcher 3 called songs of the past and it announced the witcher 3 remastered a game that's coming out next month on september 29th and is free for all former the witcher 3 owners it's also coming to switch to and battle.net for the first time now cd project has a lot going on it just switched engines to unreal engine so it can develop more games it's working on a new ip called project hater it's working on a sequel to cyberpunk it's working on the witcher 4 it's working on the multiplayer game set in the witcher universe it's also got a load of other small projects on the go with partner studios it's certainly a lot more than they used to do and i decided it would be worthwhile talking to cd project about how the company's changed why it's going down this route, and also how it feels about the current direction of the video game business.

2:26So here it is, my interview with Michiel Nowakowski. Hello, Michiel. Welcome to the Game Business Show. CD Projekt seem to be all over Gamescom this year. The remaster of The Witcher 3 is generating so much noise. But maybe I'm being naive. Making it available for free to people who already own the game. Surely they'd be happy to buy it. And what was the thinking there? Well, first of all, hello.

2:49Michal Nowakowski: Hello. And thank you for having me here. But I don't think it was ever a thought we even had. It was never a question we ask ourselves. The way we thought about it is like, it's an improvement. It's sort of a scene on which we wanted to introduce Songs of the Past as well when we felt, okay, if we're coming back to the game after such a long time, literally, I remember we were like going deeper and deeper into the development of Songs of the Past with False Theory. and we started chatting like why don't we make the game more modern like everything feels like it was developed like 10 years ago and that was really the beginning of the conversation and we said well because it was developed actually more than 10 years ago because the development wasn't just a minute you know before 2015 yeah moment came out yeah and we started chatting like what could we do to improve it and it started like with small things like okay maybe let's fix this maybe let's fix that and then it turned into this larger project and we suddenly realized we actually have a remaster on our heads.

3:44Michal Nowakowski: But coming back to your original commercial question, we never thought about this way. The commercial bit of it is the expansion, obviously. But the game, we really felt this is the CDPR way to gift it to the players who already own it. Of course, if you haven't, then you will have to purchase the game from scratch. But then we tried to sweeten the deal for you by adding two expansions into the whole package. So it was just never a question we ask ourselves, to be honest. Did you think you'll be releasing an expansion to The Witcher 3 12 years after it came out? Depends on when we took that decision, yes.

4:19Michal Nowakowski: Obviously, no. But seriously, for a long time, no. We felt that The Witcher 3 is a closed book and we're never ever coming back to it. But a couple of, you know, happy accidents happened. Like, you know, we started collaboration with Fool's Theory. They were supposed to work on The Witcher 1. We realized that needs a little bit more time because of certain technology dependencies with Witcher 4. And then, you know, we actually had the idea for the third expansion a long time ago, but it was, you know, in the drawer, you know, put there forever. We never thought we're going to be taking it out.

4:48Michal Nowakowski: But all things combined, one led to another conversation with Fool's Theory. I'm shrinking it all. That was quite a lot of conversations led to like, why don't we try and make an expansion for a game? Does it even make sense? Such a long time. Has anybody done that, you know, for a single player game? I'm not talking, you know, like the World of Warcraft, which is a different story. It's a live-operated game. And that led us to the answer, which was yes. Let's give it a shot. It sounds maybe crazy, but let's try and give Keralt one more ride. And that's where we are right now. Is it still doing like five million copies every year, The Witcher 3, even now?

5:21Michal Nowakowski: I wouldn't say it's doing every year, but for sure, I think that's the way you can look at it when you compare the number from like the last year. It did very well in the last period of time. It really is fluctuating depending on a lot of stuff like what's animating it outside of the game, the sales periods and so on. But yes, it's true it did around 5 million copies last year. When you've got a game, it's not just that, Cyberpunk's also doing, I think maybe even more than that every year. Does that take the pressure off, oh, we need to get The Witcher 4 done for this time? Are you able to be a little bit more flexible with timelines and things like that?

5:53Michal Nowakowski: So, no, we're not thinking about The Witcher 4 in a way like it has to be by XYZ or else, you know. that's not the kind of pressure we're even allowing to be put on ourselves. We want to be sure that the game is, you know, as good as we want it to be. There's certain ambition, which is not small behind that game. And we want to be sure we get there and we take the time we need to get there. So no, it doesn't take any pressure off. It doesn't put any extra pressure, but it doesn't take any pressure off when it comes to the quality. I mean, this is something that the team is always pursuing as the first thing.

6:27But I just think back to, I know, I've talked about it loads with you folks, but Cyberpunk and the launch there, and they felt like there was pressure to get that game out at that point, and that had an impact upon what you had to do with your team, and also had an impact, you know, the game wasn't quite right when it came out. And I was just wondering if, because these games just keep on selling and selling and selling, you're able to go, well, if it's not ready, we can just, you know, punt it back a bit.

6:50Michal Nowakowski: I think the situation was different in a way that, first of all, we were in a very peculiar moment in time as in this was the middle of the covid and and honestly the way the tension builds within the team i think was a little bit different than maybe if it wasn't the case i don't mean to you know put it all on covid and and so on but it was a factor for sure so what it what it does is like the team was getting exhausted in a different way there was a lot of factors yes there were people outside telling you telling us you should launch already, fans asking for the game to be launched. But the team itself also wanted to push it out of the door because it was really tiring at that moment in time.

7:31Michal Nowakowski: And the decision to launch was for sure wrong, period. There's no denying it. But there's no easy answer to, you know, to like, I don't know, some magical investors or something like that. I've read a lot of that in the internet telling us, you have to release now or else. That was not the situation. It was much more complicated, much more psychological, I would even say. Oh, okay. I didn't know that. You're quite a big company now. Yes and no. I mean, we're trying to think as a, I mean, okay, we're not a small company. We're not a startup. We're not, we're independent as we're not depending on any other entity, but we're, I for sure wouldn't call us indie.

8:07Michal Nowakowski: That would be, that would be for sure. I have a lie. Too far. That would be a lie. But we're of a certain size for sure. at the same time we're still at heart trying to think exactly like we like we did so we're trying to all the time make sure that the company doesn't lose its you know north star its compass when it comes to both quality the way we try to service fans the way we want to tell our stories this is this is all vital to the success like in fact it's kind of like we we have a little bit more toys to play with because of the size and we feel we we hope we'll be able to tell more and better stories because of that, but we don't want to change the core of what's cool about the company or what was cool about it, you know, when we were studying way back.

8:49Well, because we had Conrad on the show a few months ago, talking about obviously his new game.

8:53Michal Nowakowski: Mm-hmm. And he said that one of the reasons why he wanted to do Rebel Wolves was because he wanted to get back to being not a manager, basically, and being part of a smaller team. And I guess that's the challenge, isn't it? When you get bigger and bigger and bigger, because your games are getting bigger, you're being more ambitious. You're one of the top game developers in the world. That requires a certain amount of, you know, resource. but also you want to somehow keep hold of what it is that makes CD Projekt special. How do you do that? Can you? Well, it is true in a way that the larger the development team is, I think the whole process is for sure different, which is, I think, not just true for development of games.

9:34Michal Nowakowski: It's true for any team doing anything. I mean, if it's 50 or 100 of you, it's a very different story than if you're a 500 and then, you know, another number like that working externally with you, it just changes a lot. So I think for our team, for the people working on the game, it changes a great deal in how they have to plan, how they have to execute. In fact, Cyberpunk was a big reason for us to rethink how the production should be run, how we should make sure we look at certain processes, milestone pickups, what is the toleration for some, I don't know, bugs spilling over from one milestone to the other, creating technology depth, you know, a lot of stuff like that was our consideration right after the Cyberpunk launch.

10:15Michal Nowakowski: And one of the first thoughts was like, how do we rethink ourselves to make sure it doesn't happen again? Yeah. Or like minimizing the chances of anything even near, you know, like that. So it is tough, but like, uh, lots of procedures sounds like a bank, I don't know, but like lots of good procedures that actually make sense are beneficial to the team and as little procedures that will actually make you slow down or like cut on creative or cut on risk taking because risk taking is super important to us you may think we're not taking risks anymore but the company is taking risks all the time the team is taking risks all the time and we want to encourage people to take risks creatively because we don't want to just build another you know which are free with just prettier something or better xyz we want to create a new game that is going to be like oh it's it's it's it's it's different but it's it's actually better it's an improvement on what was there before.

11:05Michal Nowakowski: Same with cyberpunk and so on. This is the ambition. So we feel that if we stay in the same spot, we're no longer going to be growing. And I don't mean growing in numbers. I mean, growing as a, you know, as human beings, as human beings that want to create something different. And a reputation as the market leader, which means, you know, you set the bar. Thank you. I mean, this is what we're trying to tell ourselves, like set the bar, push the bar even further. But, you know, I'm a big believer that you earned that with your last release. So So once we're going to launch and if we're going to be there, I'm happy to hear that from you.

11:38Michal Nowakowski: But before we do that, that's, you know. Do you see yourself becoming a bigger company? I know a lot of developers these days are doing outsourcing if they need to scale up rather than expanding. I mean, what's that? How's that for you? Don't get me wrong. We still get, we still do outsource. We work with a lot of partners. Even the example of, you know, Songs of the Past is, you know, we work with False Theory. Yeah. We work with Eksoft out of Hungary on the technology. There's a lot of other partners, you know, involved here and there. but I don't think we have a goal of growing to some crazy number I think I think the way we are thinking of growing is uh for sure initially there was a plan to develop two games at the same time well at the same time meaning not launching you know back to back like we don't want to have Witcher 4 and then immediately right after you know next month Cyberpunk 2 that's not going to happen but like Witcher 4 is here in development let's say it's almost ready to ship uh Cyberpunk punk is here and then we're starting at some point we want to have the third hadar of course is going to be the next one and it's somewhere at the beginning it's already you can call it development but it's really early on and then you know this is done this goes here this goes here another witcher goes here this is more the way we're thinking but it's free isolated teams with with clear leadership with clear vision and there's a certain capacity beyond which i think we cannot go if we want to be sure that we deliver at a certain quality at a certain level.

12:59Michal Nowakowski: But we still believe there's ways to grow in terms of sales even. If you look at the, for example, GTA 5, you know, what they sold. These are very different numbers to what we have achieved, which are free or cyberpunk. So if you look at them, there is still room for growth. Oh, wow. 65 million is not quite enough for you. That's not what I'm saying. No, no. Don't joking. I mean, we're super happy with that. But of course, I'm just saying that if you're asking us from like the pure business growth perspective yeah yeah we can do more games although i would not count on us being i don't know annual launch or something like that that's not going to happen and we can we can sell more if we if we do our job well you're about three games internally but you've also got all these partner games that you're working on that you're overseeing is there a risk maybe of overstretching or overextending you mean overstretching as in like uh stretching ourselves or like maybe losing focus a little bit it's always the risk it's always the threat You know, the amount of game companies I've spoken to over the years that decided, oh, we're going to expand, we're going to make more games.

13:57And then what happened was they ended up hurting the core games. The new games didn't really work out. They ended up refocusing around the core. And so I'm going to always alert to that risk.

14:06Michal Nowakowski: There is always a risk for sure. Yeah. And we actually, I think, kill a lot of ideas that we have, and they will never happen or maybe sometime in the future, because we believe we cannot execute them at the proper level or with a proper focus. So every collaboration, every partnership we make or every development we make, we go into that with the thought whether we can actually deliver on that, whether we can support it or not. There's definitely no partnerships which we would take, even external. Especially external, I would actually even say, where we would just say, here's The Witcher or here's Cyberpunk.

14:41Michal Nowakowski: Do whatever you want. The important bit is for it to be tomorrow. That's not going to happen. Every partnership, we invest ourselves. we invest our people being part of the process especially in the beginning making sure that the other side for example understands what the witcher or the cyberpunk is overseeing those things we actually even have like a franchise team specifically working uh just on that just to make sure that for example it is within the lore it uh sticks to like the story continuum or the lore continuum that the visuals fall within what we think is fitting for you know the witcher or cyberpunk and so on and on and on so so a lot of scrutiny goes into that we could actually we will from from like pure uh nerds being at the helm perspective we would love to do more because there's a lot of cool things we could do it's just there's a limit that we can do exactly to your point because if we go larger we just everything's gonna fall apart move to unreal engine that's part of this sort of making sure that you know you can do multiple projects right isn't that part of the thinking behind that technology move uh yes i mean that was part of it because um the the thing with red engine was it was actually a very good engine it was uh we built it in the beginning because we did not see in the market any engine that was fitting for the kind of games we wanted to make which was open world you know choices and consequences story driven.

16:08Michal Nowakowski: We felt there was nothing that could actually deliver on that. When we first had a glimpse of UE5 and what was the promise of what is going to be capable, that was when we started thinking, what if we had a strategic partnership with guys like Epic, who are going to be, they're always, by nature of what they do, also Fortnite and all that, they're always going to be taking care of the foundation of what the engine is. And we can build our tools. I'm super oversimplifying, but we can build our tools specific to what we want to do and co-develop engine here and there with them in some specific places.

16:42Michal Nowakowski: And that's going to allow us to bring out more games instead of with Red Engine. What was the case? We had to, very few people know that actually, but we had to build the engine from scratch for every game we made. It's not like, you know, you were taking the Witcher 3 engine and then like, you know, tweak it here and there and he was ready to run Cyberpunk. You have to change so much. It's crazy. So we found ourselves investing small years into first doing the technology. And then in the end, you were finding yourself developing technology next to the development of the game as well, which is always the case to some extent, of course.

17:16Michal Nowakowski: But it was more so than we wished it to be. So the idea was, and of course, we're still ahead of proving whether that's going to be the case. We believe, yes, we believe we're on the right path. And Epic's been a great partner so far. that will be able to deliver more by building foundation, you know, on Unreal Engine and then making more games. Like the switch from one game to the other should be a little bit easier. Are you confident you can still keep that uniqueness to your games, even when using a more off-the-shelf engine like Unreal? Honestly, yes. I mean, that was a big question we were asking ourselves in the beginning because the visuals pushing the envelope with, you know, how the games look, feel, the cinematic feel of it all was very very important you could I think especially see that with you know Cyberpunk which was the the last game the last full game we launched and that was like a big question mark when we were in the R &D phase of thinking trying to think outside of box of whether UE5 is going to be a good fit or not we really ask ourselves all of these questions and the answer was in some cases it's not yet but together with Epic we can bring it to that point.

18:25Michal Nowakowski: And actually, you know, what we did with the, you know, tech demo, the, as we called it, Project Silver, the one we dropped in Orlando with, you know, during the Unreal Fest, was a little bit of a showcase of how we're planning to get there. So I know a lot of people when we made that switch were asking questions, oh, they're going to be another Unreal-looking game. There's a saying like that. But I think we're not going to be. I think we really are going to be able to differentiate ourselves. People are going to feel this is the CDPR game still, and technology under the hood is actually going to be irrelevant to them from the pure fan perspective.

19:01I don't even know if this is important to you. Does it help speed up development in any way?

19:05Michal Nowakowski: In the beginning, no, because you have to make a switch. You have to change a lot of pipelines. You have to switch people from... You have to build tools from scratch. You have those tools for for example for quest building for uh red engine and you have to build it from ground you know for for ue5 that's a that's a big shift but uh once you get into that and you build it for the witcher and then you tweak it you know here and there actually tweaks are still not insignificant but still easier for you know for cyberpunk between cyberpunk and the witcher then you're or i wouldn't say on the rails but you're definitely on a faster path than you were when we were making the, you know, jumps from one engine to another between the genres, actually, and the IPs.

19:49I ask, because obviously a lot of AAA companies that we talk to, not all of them, but some of them, they're trying to work out how to bring down that cost of development, which is often how long the game takes to make, really, is people plus time. I don't know if you have to worry too much about that, but is it something that is a focus for you?

20:06Michal Nowakowski: We are, of course, cost conscious. It's not unimportant. I mean, we're a business in the end, So I would lie if I said that it doesn't matter how much the game costs, but I, to be honest, the first thing we always look at is whether the quality we're meeting is there and period, whether we're meeting the expectations of what the fans are expecting from the next installment of The Witcher or not. This is like the dominant thing we're looking at. So I definitely wouldn't put cost in the number one position, as weird as it may sound. We're still cost conscious. We're still trying to make sure we're keeping within the boundaries.

20:43Michal Nowakowski: Or if it's exceeding, then we sit down and think what it means for everything pretty much. But I definitely wouldn't say this is a cost-driven development. If you want to have a cost-driven development, and that's a proper thing, by the way, that's a proper business thinking for a lot of games, you cannot make a game like The Witcher 4. By the way, I doubt if the development of GTA 6 was a cost-driven development. I'm, in fact, 100 % sure it wasn't. I think the philosophy might be very similar in many ways. I'll change the subject a little bit because the last thing I've been playing from CD Projekt has been Cyberpunk on Switch 2.

21:19All right. Which I thought was a remarkable job. Thank you. But I don't know what success looks like for that game. For the Switch, you mean? The Switch 2 version, yeah.

21:28Michal Nowakowski: The success? well we were the best-selling third-party game on switch for a while i think when we launched in fact we were overselling uh quite a few nintendo games uh their own games uh with the exception of of course of mario kart which was a mario mario kart b and c it was also bundled with consoles so yeah and and quite deservedly i mean this is this is an awesome game yeah but uh i think that was a success on its own. We were very happy, by the way, with the sales numbers on the platform. Made the money on it. Proke even. We're in the positive. It is a peculiar platform because it's, you know, it was at its launch moment, so the install base was not as huge.

22:11Michal Nowakowski: So we never expected numbers of, I don't know, Steam or something like that. But we did very well. And actually, the game continues to sell. We're happy. And the most important bit is that, you know, the players are happy. I believe Nintendo was very happy as well. Everything we heard from them was, you know, was praised. They were also, you know, very impressed with how the game performed on the hardware, you know, the special features of Cyberpunk on Switch 2 and so on. And, you know, wait and see for The Witcher now. Oh, yeah. I looked at it and I thought, it's going to be, you've got not so much concern about Cyberpunk.

22:45I can see Nintendo pushing it as well and it looked amazing. But, you know, you've got Mario Kart bundled with it. If you've got the Zelda games, they're nicely upgraded and improved. A bunch of games that were upgraded and improved. it's backwards compatible, unlike the Switch one. And there's all that kind of stuff that I thought probably might impact the amount of games people buy. But it was good to see, glad to hear it's done well.

23:05Michal Nowakowski: This was a bit of a test for us because this was literally the first time ever for us to be on the platform day to day long. So we kind of didn't know what to expect. But we liked the hardware so much and you know the pitch that Nintendo had overall for the whole ecosystem that we decided to give it a shot. And I think it paid off. We're happy. Well, you're generally very in with the platform holders, Nintendo and PlayStation and Xbox. But they're having a bit of a troubled time at the moment. We're seeing the prices rising as a result of all of the component shortages. Sales are falling towards the end of the cycle.

23:37And there's gossip around the delay for the next generation, though. How are you feeling about consoles? Are you worried?

23:43Michal Nowakowski: I'm not worried. I mean, of course, I'm not a specialist on the business. I never run a console business, probably never will. So we're only watching as the participants of the market, you know, on the sidelines, so to say. Of course. And of course, you know, all you said is true. You know, I think from the hardware manufacturer perspective, you know, the rising prices of memory are a big issue for everybody, to be honest, for PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo as well. And it's objective. I mean, it is what it is. I think consoles are still necessary as the market participants to kind of broaden the audience on the casual or semi-casual level.

24:24Michal Nowakowski: I think it's important. I mean, there's something for everyone. I think actually in many ways we live in days when gaming is the most accessible in every possible way as it ever was. If you go back to like 80s, you know, and try to plug in your ZX81 or something like that, or Atari 800, 2600 console or something, you know, it was a very different experience, especially the computer as to what it is right now with just plug and play consoles and what they are capable of. So I think it's important for broadening of the audience to have an easy to plug in and enjoy gaming from the get-go box. So I'm a big believer that I'm going to weather the storm.

25:05Michal Nowakowski: But the pricing, this is the objective challenge. And what are the rumors? We hear them just as you did, you know, of the next gen, being delayed, we hear them. I don't know if they're true or not. Does it matter to you? Does it make a difference? Well, the way we look at it is we, how we reach the gamers is a little bit irrelevant. It's the content that is important. And we believe that if the content is the king and if the content is right, people will find a way to play it. So, you know, if when we launch PS5, you know, Xbox Series XS, you know, and uh and uh um uh is what people are playing the games on we're gonna be there uh we're gonna try and find a business bubble that's gonna work uh you know for us commercially that's gonna be fine for the players that's gonna make them fine with what they you know paid for how they paid for it and so on and that's that's it i mean the if you ask the dev team they will always always have an answer that's gonna be simple give us as much power as we can because we want to show the best stuff, that's the way they're wired.

26:13Michal Nowakowski: But then again, they're also realistic. They know what's in the market and, you know, that might sometimes, if something gets delayed, like the next gen, if this is really the case, it could be the case that some of the ideas they had might be put on the shelf and left for something that's in the future. But I guess that's just the reality. We have to adjust. We're not worried about the commercial side of it. I think consoles are here to stay. I'm a big believer. I am too. Actually, Matthew Bromberg from Unity was on our show last week and he said, um... I know him. Yeah, and he made a whole thing about, yes, consoles going for a hard time at the moment.

26:47Some of it is the pricing, some of it is the Roblox generation upgrade into consoles, some of that. But really, it comes down to games, isn't it? And hopefully, the pricing's temporary and that sold itself over time. I seriously hope so, yes. And you've got, if you, you know, people make some amazing console games, people will come out and buy them. You know, we've had this amazing year at cinema, where everyone's going to the cinema again, and it turned out that all you needed to do was give people a reason to go to the cinema. I was actually going to literally say that.

27:12Michal Nowakowski: I used that in some conversation today. That's, look at, you know, at the Odyssey. You have the right story, told in the right way, done in the right way, and then you suddenly have people show up in huge numbers and break the records. And, you know, suddenly all the people who are saying, you know, cinema is dead, are like, Okay, then what about that? Even if you go beyond, below that billion dollar level. No, of course. I use the most extreme example, of course, yeah. Even like Wuthering Heights, which did... Sure. I wasn't a massive fan of that film, but it did very, very well, and it's a gothic romance, and then you've got horror movies doing extremely well, and Project Hail Mary, and all of these, it just...

27:48Anyway, we're not here talking about film.

27:49Michal Nowakowski: No, no, I mean, it's all about making a game that's a great game, has its audience, uh makes sense budget-wise i mean like like spend what you're aiming for is another thing and and and then of course discoverability can be a massive issue i think this is the biggest challenge in the video games right now if you ask me that's that's like probably the biggest problem of of 95 percent of the market maybe um like like a lot of people in the market for sure this is an issue i'm asked a question that's a risky question um the witch of four coming in 2028 right right that means apparently you're not going to be able to have a disc version on PlayStation 5.

28:25Michal Nowakowski: We don't know what's going to be the case. This is, we know what PlayStation has announced. Yeah. I mean, we have no influence on the policies of, uh, of the first parties, to be honest. Uh, the discs for the first parties, like for the, uh, you know, including PlayStation have to be manufactured, you know, in their own factories. So if they stop manufacturing indeed by 2028, then, then, then yes. But like what we're, we're focusing on, like we're big fans of people having access to tangible, collectible things. Like we were nerds ourselves and we like that. We always supported that. So whatever is the case, we're going to be for sure having a box.

29:03Michal Nowakowski: We're going to have a box that's going to have some, you know, some feelies in it. Something that's going to, you know, be something you're going to be wanting to open up and enjoy. But we have no influence actually on what is the case here. No, because I know you love physical because that's what we did with the Switch 2 version. I know all those fancy speclets editions you got and then I'm kind of like I'm not maybe it's just me personally I'm not necessarily too worried about the lack of the disc or not I do but I do like to have okay I've got the Resident Evil Requiem watch on I do like to have a physical item that's just my own perspective I was going to ask actually though changing the subject I asked this question before many years ago but I've not asked it since you've got the TV shows The Witcher and uh and Edgerunners always how much of an impact how significant is that now I mean I know that's not just you, but it's impacting your games.

29:51How significant is that now?

29:53Michal Nowakowski: You mean, like, right now, this very moment? Yeah, yeah. So, this very moment, not much, because there's no new season or anything. And there's an important difference. Like, The Witcher show, we are actually not... We're not tied to that in any way. I mean, this was the show that's been done between, you know, Andrzej Sapkowski and the deal he has signed with Netflix. So we're not really involved in that. We did exchange some Easter eggs and stuff like that, but that's not our doing, so to say. We did, however, benefit for sure when the show launched. We did see, you know, the spike of interest, you know, especially around the season one of people coming in and checking out the game, buying it and so on.

30:38Michal Nowakowski: with animation and with cyberpunk in general this is a little bit of different story because we control the tv film animation rights ourselves so we orchestrated you know edge runners and the upcoming edge runners releasing on netflix on the october 20th as far as far as i recall that actually had a massive impact as well we saw a big surge of uh sales for when we combined it because we we did it so that we had a patch with items and elements and some teeny tiny you know quests a bit from related to the edge on s tv show you know we put it in the game and that created like this perfect moment i think for the fans uh you know we're fans of things ourselves and we know ourselves that we like to if we truly enjoy something whatever ip that is you like to see you like to connect the dots between the things and if they're done right like you you're in heaven that's why it was very important for us with the edge runners that the show is of really top quality and we were very involved in in co-creating it same thing with the uh you know second season and yeah i mean this this creates this this moment so yeah so it has a value i mean it's not just you know we put it out there and it's it's there it has meaning both for the fans because they enjoy it and it actually creates some commercial uh you know feedback as well well games taking so long to make i imagine it also allows you to you know keep providing stories and moments for fans.

31:59No, no, no.

31:59Michal Nowakowski: I mean, we're all, exactly. I mean, we're all about creating those moments, you know. In fact, I don't think we thought about it this way exactly, but because of how we were doing that, I was told by someone not so long ago that you guys are kind of live operating a single-player game. And I, you know, I laughed a little bit, but I was like, actually, that person has a point. I mean, we are kind of doing that. I just never thought about it this way. But we create those moments and, you know, you bring in new people, new cohorts of people who are not maybe or forgot about the game but it reminded them of that and come and check it out and and you know we we have new people enjoying the game yeah and you do it slightly differently to to someone like maybe io interactive which obviously have their little challenges they put in the game all the time but it's a single player game hitman and maybe even no man's sky which gets this element to it those games that are living on and on and on they keep performing really well they keep selling they keep appealing to people they're sort of a weird single player as a service sort of thing that's happening.

32:55I don't mean that in a sort of grubby way. I mean that in a very, you're just keeping it alive. And that's how you have someone like The Witcher 3, you know, 12 years in getting, well, 11 years at the moment, but 12 years when the DLC drops, it's still getting updated. That's true. Yeah, it's remarkable. I'm going to ask one final question. And it's very, I ask this every time, but you kind of may have answered it earlier on. So, but it is, where would you like to see CD

33:17Michal Nowakowski: project in should i say five or ten years um well honestly we we actually have a plan that's uh that's a 10-year plan and we we kind of update it internally on a rolling basis of course you know i'd say the the nearest five years is kind of specific the further way you go from that it's a little bit more of a guessing game i would say yeah but we definitely want to be a company that is able to successfully launch two big games like work on them at the same time kind of like what i was saying you know before and launch them successfully and you know to the point that fans really think these are worthy new entries into the franchise we want to be the company that is also growing its entertainment footprint in terms of like animation and tv shows that are executed at the top-notch level and are not seen as like oh they just slapped a license on it and uh you know shot a movie or tv series and it's there and then it's forgotten but like it becomes a classic of a genre on its own like this is for sure a desire same thing for comic books or whatever else we do in the pop culture location-based entertainment we like to be in all these and all for all of these things to be worthy on their own but the key thing is of course games like uh being able to launch two free games within within certain relatively short period of time again i don't mean year by year that's never going to be the goal it's for sure where we just we just would like to tell more cool stories to the people given the time you know on this earth we have which sounds very philosophically ingrained but that's that's actually true well if you if you only make one game at a time you haven't got that many left in you right That was actually big thinking.

35:05Michal Nowakowski: When we were sitting down and talking, everybody has a biology built into them. And we were like, if we keep doing things the way we do it, and we have ideas, we have a lot of ideas, we're going to make only XYZ before we're going to retire or naturally retire from this place. So how can we do more, but not compromise on the quality? This was the predominant thought. And then we started thinking, okay, so what's the business around that. But I was like, really, at the beginning, how can we do more, but out of quality? So this is my biggest wish. I'd like us to look back and say, okay, we did it.

35:38Michal Nowakowski: We told, I don't know, two, three stories instead of just one within that moment, and all of them were top-notch. Thank you for coming and joining us on the show. Good luck with the DLC launch, and the remaster launch, and the Witcher 4. All of that, you say not every year, but here we are. There's quite a few things coming up, yes. And we still have some cards up our sleeve going forward. Cannot comment on exactly details, but we like teasing people. Brilliant. Well, thank you so much for your time and good luck with it. Thank you. That's it for today's episode of The Game Business Show. Thank you to Mikael there for joining us.

36:12We'll be back with more news, analysis, insight and interviews in the days and weeks ahead. You know, if you want to make sure you don't miss an episode, you just need to go to thegamebusiness.com, put in your email address, and every single time we do a new show you will get an email about it but that's it for us today until next time thank you for tuning in what is the greatest rpg that isn't a cd project rpg there's two ones which i would put for

36:39Michal Nowakowski: different reasons one is skyrim which i had a lot of fun with because of its sandbox it's very non-cd project game emphasis on story is in a very different spot than with with our games but i I had a lot of fun with it. And the other one which I loved was Obsidian's Fallout New Vegas. I know people are divided on that. I'm not a PhD in Fallout. I mean, I played those games, actually all of them. But like, this was the one I enjoyed the most. I liked the cheeky writing. I liked the, you know, humor, which I think was the most obvious in that game. Here's a cult favorite. If you could be the CEO of any other company, doesn't have to be games, what would it be?

37:14Michal Nowakowski: That's interesting. question. I've always loved space exploration and interesting facts and trivia about... In fact, when I was a kid, I was hoping we're going to be, you know, by this time, pretty much, you know, based on the moon, based on Mars. So I think it's a kid in me speaking, I would say SpaceX, not because I have some humongous knowledge of how to run a space rocket company. PC or console? I don't have the division in my head because I play on everything. I find myself playing some games more on the pc and then there's some games i'm gonna play on the playstation some stuff i'm gonna play on xbox and there's a lot of stuff i play especially with my children i got three boys on switch i genuinely couldn't choose what is the greatest album of all time i'm not sure if it's the greatest but the one that sits in my heart is the blood sugar sex magic from red hot chili peppers oh really i just have like a super fun memories of that moment in my life if you could make a game based on any IP in the world, this is you personally, not let's say CD Projekt, what would it be?

38:14Michal Nowakowski: I would probably go for Dungeons and Dragons. I'm a big D &D fan since like forever and that would be my choice. Actually, if we went deeper with the top games we played the previous question, I would move towards the boulders gates, planescapes of this world.