The Polish Devs Are Adding a Lot of Polish
Yesterday, CD Projekt RED had their Q3 financial earnings call, which provided another opportunity for CEO Adam Kiciński to talk about Cyberpunk 2077. He shared an update on the state of development, as well as some inside info on anticipation levels. According to the company’s data, the game is attracting much more attention than The Witcher 3 did.
During the call, the transcript of which is available here, Kiciński talked about the anticipation for Cyberpunk 2077. Specifically, he mentioned the trailers released this year and the amount of popularity they’ve garnered. For a little bit of context, he used an infographic to compare its trailer viewership to Witcher 3.
“We are comparing apples and apples here: you are witnessing the activity on our own YouTube channel in the first four post-release weeks,” Kiciński said. “The six yellow bars on the left represent six of our most popular videos promoting The Witcher 3, published between the game’s announcement and ultimate release. The two bluish bars on the right correspond to the two initial – well, maybe not initial since the first-ever Cyberpunk 2077 trailer was released some years ago – but this year we released two new trailers showcasing our upcoming release. The first of those appeared at the end of the second quarter, while the 48-minute gameplay trailer was released this August. As you can see, interest in Cyberpunk 2077, or at least in its trailers, is many times greater than in the case of The Witcher.
“Of course I do not encourage you to draw far-reaching conclusions; however at this early stage of the campaign the most important question from our perspective was whether Cyberpunk – the new IP we’re introducing to the market – will take hold, whether it will be as well received as we would expect, at least in terms of attracting gamer interest. These viewership figures answer our initial question in the positive: gamers are indeed interested in Cyberpunk 2077 and are eagerly awaiting its release. Of course, the bulk of the campaign still lies ahead. This is merely the beginning; the game has to be completed and there’s a lot of development work in store. We are, however, convinced, that this product has the potential to meet our expectations.”
Later on, Kiciński confirmed a revelatory piece of news that came out of Gamescom 2018, specifically that the game was playable from start to finish.
“We are fleshing out the game world,” the CEO continued. “The comment regarding the game ’s campaign, yes, it was true at the time it appeared, however not all of the game looked like the fragments showcased at E3 and gamescom; a large part was not quite as detailed. We are filling the world with content and tweaking things, and this involves a great deal of hard work on the part of developers. What I can say today is that we’re progressing fast and according to plan. When we finish, there’s also the hugely important phase of polishing all that game content. There was a question about the quality of the game we plan to deliver at launch and our intention is to deliver something of great quality. Once the game is complete, we can begin to patch various bugs, both major and minor, and we are setting aside time to complete this process.”
Knowing CD Projekt RED, plenty of time may pass before we see a release date for Cyberpunk 2077. Sure, the entire campaign is playable now, but the devs are perfectionists when it comes to creating a world and populating it with content. In Witcher documentary from NoClip, the team revealed how—100 hours of story later—the team had planned to create yet more missions set in different worlds. That’s dedication.
Have you played The Witcher 3? Are you more excited for Cyberpunk 2077 than you were for the Fantasy experience? Let us know in the comments below.
SOURCE: Wccftech