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Loosely echoing recent remarks from Baldur's Gate 3 and Larian boss Swen Vincke, joint CD Projekt CEO Michał Nowakowski says "cutting-edge single-player games" will stay popular even as the industry trends in live service, free-to-play, and various other directions.
In the company's latest board report, sizing up its 2024 activities and results, Nowakowski writes:
"We are aware that the video game market continues to evolve – however, we believe that cutting-edge single-player games rooted in strong franchises and immersive narratives will continue to enjoy great popularity. Our experience, along with brands such as The Witcher and Cyberpunk, which it is our pleasure to further develop, help us build a strong position on the market and paint a positive outlook – while collaboration with global tech and innovation leaders enables us to keep abreast of technical developments in the industry and continue to deliver top-quality entertainment."
Vincke, meanwhile, in a sharper dig at the harebrained recurring declaration that big single-player games are dead, reckoned they aren't going anywhere, "they just have to be good." And when you get down to it, 'just make a good one' is really just a short version of 'make a cutting-edge one rooted in a strong franchise and with an immersive narrative.'
CD Projekt is in the process of establishing a new IP (codenamed Hadar), and has just announced a collaboration with mobile powerhouse Scopely, but its fastest horses are still the same two single-player series. The company's pipeline includes The Witcher 4, Cyberpunk 2 (rather, Orion, the sequel to Cyberpunk 2077, whatever it ends up being called), The Witcher remake, and The Witcher spinoff thing-a-majig Sirius.
CD Projekt is very much embedded in the "cutting-edge single-player" business, and it remains one of the most successful companies in the space, so Nowakowski's comments come as no surprise as the studio invests and expands for parallel projects that seem to double down on what got it this far.
Per today's report, from October 31, 2024 to February 28, 2025, CD Projekt went from 650 to 707 active developers, with particularly large gains to the Witcher 4, Orion, and "shared services" teams. As associate Cyberpunk director Paweł Sasko put it, "we are growing my chooms."
Single-player games certainly seem to be doing alright this month: Assassin's Creed Shadows has sold over 2 million copies in a few days, generating the series' biggest launch since Assassin's Creed Valhalla, which Ubisoft has dubbed a "perfect storm" we're unlikely to see again.
