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New consoles will replace PC game development, says CD Projekt Red

Speaking to website GamesIndustry, Adam Badowski, managing director of CD Projekt Red said that the PlayStation 4 and the next Xbox may overcome the major platforms such as PC development.

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Gazondaily4798d ago

Surely it would always be better to develop for PC first and then port to consoles? Whilst the power of the next gen consoles may make them seem like attractive platforms for development, surely this will be only be the case for a short period of time before the gap between PC and consoles widens even more, technologically speaking?

soloman7474798d ago

The truth is, consoles have a significantly larger consumer base than PCs. Larger base = more units sold. In addition, less piracy occurs on consoles, making it a more attractive option for developers to sell their games. Consoles are more lucrative.

If you were to use similar example, more app development occurs for the Android and iPhone devices than Windows Phone and Blackberry Operating Systems, because they have a larger footprint.

LightofDarkness4798d ago

Yes, those next gen consoles that haven't been released yet surely have a massive install base. So many units sold.

:/

And it's not more lucrative for developers, it's the same for them (publisher fronts the money). It CAN be more lucrative for publishers, but only for those who publish COD, Madden/FIFA and Mario games. Everyone else is trying desperately to strike gold with something like that, because investors seem to expect that level of success these days for almost every title with a budget over $10 million (money men who know nothing of gaming, coincidentally those who would ruin it with banality for the same reason).

Piracy on PC isn't actually as bad as people would like to have you believe. Publishers don't like releasing on PC because it's a very open platform whose user base demand a great deal of respect from them (and cause quite a fuss when they don't get it), whereas they'd prefer the more controlled nature of gaming consoles. Console "closed garden" style markets are what allow the DLC/nickel-and-diming culture that has prevailed this generation. Look at the Sim City fiasco for the future of where developers want console gaming to be, and why they're now once again reluctant to make PC only software. PC is often the proving ground for new paradigms and business models. Just wait and see, online only gaming (regardless of whether it's SP or MP) is just around the corner.

Quite a great deal of piracy occurs on consoles too, almost as much as PC (if not more in many cases). Go to any dedicated torrent site and compare the number of downloads for 360 and Wii ISOs to PC games. The numbers differ very little.

MysticStrummer4798d ago

"surely this will be only be the case for a short period of time before the gap between PC and consoles widens even more, technologically speaking?"

The problem is, that gap is only a potential one because relatively few people will keep their PCs on the bleeding edge. Most PC gaming is done on slightly older stock PCs or PCs with minimal upgrades. This is what PC gamers clearly don't understand when they complain about consoles holding PC gaming back. More piracy is an issue as well, but developers in general aren't going to invest much time or money into making sure relatively few people get all possible bells and whistles. I saw an article on here last night where a PC gamer was downplaying PS4 by saying PCs could easily have 32GB of memory. That's great if most people set their PCs up that way and devs take advantage of it, but as it stands, that much memory is incredible overkill that won't be utilized by game developers.

hesido4798d ago

I'd like to add, consoles may be holding PC development back to some degree (not as much as PC elitists would like us to believe, I'd say it is more held back by old PC's around). But maybe, it is not that bad: Thanks to having to cater to console features sets, even older PC's had a lot games playable. Can we really ask everybody to upgrade their PC's every 2 years? There are a lot of people with old hardware.

Also, thanks to consoles, developers were more inclined to use multi-threading and get accustomed to such coding practices, which in the end also benefits PC's with multiple cores.

NateCole4798d ago

Yes agree. People with low to mid range gaming PC's is what really is holding PC gaming back as well as piracy. I don't blame them though because not everyone can afford top of the line gaming PC's.

It's like the situation with 4K right now. Not many people can afford it as such devs will not spend much more money developing 4K content for only a few that can afford it.

landog4797d ago (Edited 4797d ago )

nowhere does it say in the article that new consoles will replace pc development, he said that witcher 2 was developed for pc exclusively and that "could" change in the future......lol...misleading title

meaning, they may develop with consoles in mind next gen, as an afterthought

the pc version will still of course be far and away the very best one, with vastly better graphics, way better performance, further draw distance, better shadows and immensly higher resolutions

witcher 3 on ps4 will be 720 30 frames, bet on it!

130°

PlayStation’s Revenue From Its PC Games Reached $300 Million in 2023

PlayStation PC revenue reached $300 million in 2023, but despite this success, it appears Sony may be pulling back from PC releases.

51d ago
lodossrage51d ago

It's not a success unless we know the profit. It's the same reason I get on Xbox when they mention revenue.

If Sony is considering keeping their single player games exclusive to the PS systems despite the 300 million PC revenue, that means they didn't profit from the venture.

Eonjay51d ago

You are correct. Making 300 million doesn't mean anything if you have 299 million in operating costs. Clearly they are making some profit if they want to keep their multiplayer games on PC but what of their single player games?

DivineHand12551d ago

How could they possibly not make a profit with $300M in revenue?

Nixxis only has about 90 employees. Let's go high and say each person on the payroll makes $200k per year; payroll would only be $18M. I believe the development time to port a game from PlayStation to PC is only about a year, so unless Sony is giving out Bentleys and 5 bedroom houses to each employee with payroll, they should be making a sizable profit.

lodossrage50d ago

See, the problem with what you said is we don't know what their operating costs were. So everything you're saying there is just speculation. What we do know is reported revenue and the rumored reporting that Sony is taking first party single player games out of the PC release cycle.

Not saying you're wrong, but we need to work with what we're given.

TOTSUKO51d ago

Here’s another angle of the argument. What if they saw a concerning decline in console sales and/or game sales on PS during this window of PC releases? It may be a crazy success on pc we don’t know but eating your own market share scare PlayStation for sure especially when they are trying to sell every new gen.

lodossrage50d ago

Ok, THIS makes sense. I don't know how I didn't think about that. And we know they'll want those PS6 sales to be off the charts. It's harder to do that if their in-house made blockbusters are shared with PC.

darthv7251d ago

Given the recent price increase for their hardware... Sony should really rethink things. Having an additional revenue stream, even if the games come to PC a year after, is still money coming in. Those who wanted a 5 likely already got one, but that doesn't mean Sony should turn their backs on those who may still want to play their software on a PC.

Eonjay51d ago

Honestly, I think they are worried about PC piracy.... Getting their games on PC for free is... well its not hard at all. They have to know that and I am sure that goes into their calculus.

Michiel198951d ago

thats bogus. Early 2000's a lot of things got pirated sure, but most piracy that currently exists is because the companies themselves sell an inferior product than when you pirate it, denuvo, bad quality on movies/shows etc. It's not much anymore and other companies have been releasing their games on pc since the beginning of time and are doing fine and given the quality of sony's 1st party games they should have no issue making profit at all. Adding shit like having to log in to psn in order to play single players games because they wanna harvest your data, yes that's when I say people are in their right to pirate and sony can go suck a fatty.

We know exactly why they wouldn't want it, because they can't get people into their ecosystem and profit more off of them if they buy it for pc. Nothing more nothing less as with any other company it's only about money.

neutralgamer199251d ago

We buy more games than console gamers BTW. We have over 132 million users on steam so out of that if 2% pirate how can we all be labeled as pirates?

Real reason is sony probably didn't see the big benefits and that's on them because games come out a year later and costs full price

Profchaos51d ago (Edited 51d ago )

I disagree I think it's strategically in their best interest to remove PC as a pathway to access you need to encourage people to buy the console to play the games otherwise they won't

As soon as Xbox started putting games day one on PC sales of their consoles dropped off a cliff and piracy of their games went sky high

@michiel not true piracy exists because people want to play a game but don't want to pay for it. Piracy may have started really in the 80s but it's still going strong today if you look at any torrent and it's seed count you'll see just how strong the scene is

Michiel198950d ago

i specifically said "most piracy that currently exists", not all piracy that has ever existed.

I'm not believing that gamepass story, it's so counterintuitive. They didn't remove the option to be able to purchase a game and for short term they gave people a cheaper way to play it and THEN suddenly they started mass pirating them? yeah I'm not buying that.

Just took a look at GoW Ragnarok and the seed counts are either single or double digits, with 3 out of like 30 having triple digits, 2 of those being basically double digits cause they're so close and the other one a bit above 200. So strong........

Hereandthere50d ago

Pc sucks and xbox is dead because they stupidly put games on pc and game pass. You like this dumb idea because you want sony down to xbox pathetic level.

Extermin8or3_50d ago

Error the price hike effects hardware as well. By all accounts ps6 is designed to be able to be made as cheap as possible. Which should mean it's cheaper than ps5 pro at the very least. Pc parts are effected by increased hardware costs too so they have an obvious market position as the more affordable alternative and once people are in their ecosystem they are unlikely to abandon libraries and switch

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Jammit51d ago

And people think they’re going to give that up 🤣🤣

And it’ll be way more than 300m by now

Profchaos51d ago

If they make billions in sales on the actual console sure this isn't gross profit either

51d ago
Redemption-6451d ago

The value to the brand is significantly more important. Plus is this before or after steam takes their cut?

51d ago
Redemption-6451d ago

@Jammit

Majority of the sales is more than like from live service games, so it makes sense why they're pulling away their single player games. Which is honestly a good idea for those games and the brand. Also, if the 300M is revenue, steam taking a 30% cut means Sony is only getting around 210M. Now take aways how much they spent to bring those games to PC and you're looking at less than 200M. With majority of the money coming from live service games.

50d ago
1Victor50d ago

So easy to spot I wonder HOW YOU GUYS keep falling for his first almost sensible comment then keep getting more and more deranged 🤦🏿 😩.

50d ago
mkis00750d ago

Death Stranding is owned by Kojima (he purchased the rights back from sony.) Hence the eventual xbox port of the original. Not exactly a good example. Lets see if/when Yotei comes to pc, as that should have been announced already if going by their last first party developed titles ps5 release to pc announce timeline. It's looking more and more like the rumors are correct and Helix has has Sony rethinking pc releases. And why wouldn't they when it would guarantee a competing "console" has access to all their games without their say so.

I'd argue that 300 mill revenue without even considering what part is profit, is not nearly enough money to risk giving xbox access to PlayStation games.

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Reaper22_51d ago (Edited 51d ago )

Thats not a lot but still successful,when you consider some games costs over 100 million. But I still think Helix has something to do with them pulling back too.

Jammit51d ago

They’re definitely panicked by helix

Helix also marks the end of their party PS exclusives - Sony can’t afford to keep 3rd party games off PC

Chevalier50d ago

🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣

Panicked by Helix? You probably also believed Xbox Games would never come to Playstation or Nintendo.

50d ago
Tanktopmaster9250d ago (Edited 50d ago )

“They’re definitely panicked by helix” - 🤡🤡 I know you are a dumb little troll hurt by the demise of Xbox and the continued success of Playstation, but that is still a hell of a clown statement to make after Xbox series got whipped by Nex Playground in December… in 2026 Xbox doesn’t even show up as a skid mark next to PlayStation😬

Also, tech wise PlayStation is ahead of Xbox with PSSR. I can’t see Xbox coming up with anything that matches it. Ps6 is already WAY ahead of Helix

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80°

Xbox Only Made Up 10% of CD Projekt’s Total Sales in 2025

The latest revenue report from CD Projekt Group shows Xbox only made up 10% of sales for The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 in 2025.

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64d ago
Kyizen63d ago

Cause they play NBA2k26, COD and gamepass

Fishy Fingers63d ago (Edited 63d ago )

3x less sales than Playstation.
3x less consoles sold than Playstation.

Per captita, it averages out that the same number of users are buying CDP games regardless of platform, no?

Bathyj63d ago

The exact same or possibly more because a series S, initial investment and effort to Port to Xbox consoles for a third of the return.

Simply not worth it

LMGk62d ago

“ Simply not worth it”

And yet, basically every game comes to Xbox.

NotoriousWhiz62d ago (Edited 62d ago )

A third is a pretty big number to be honest. Like would you rather make 15 million or 20 million? That's the difference that a third makes.

GamingSinceForever63d ago

Hey it’s ok. They are really impressed with XBOx’s new CEO so exclusivity is on the way. 😂

Loktai63d ago

Ok but I mean be logical ... modern PC, Switch, PS4 PS5 then you have XBOX, of all of those XBOX is probably only 10 percent... I mean, what do you expect? 10 percent increase in sales is still nothing to sneeze at, remember - this is CD projekt red and they sell a lot of software. 10 percent of their sales is probably what most studios DREAM of selling .... just playing devils advocate..... its easy to say LOL haha XBOX.... but.. I mean we know what it is at this point. I havent bought on since my xbox one X and before that I only used other peoples xboxes since the OG XBOX and stick with PC and Playstation and switch OLED, but .. I mean.... theres nothing WRONG with an xbox considering its just not the best - but they work fine. make no mistake.

63d ago Replies(2)
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40°

CD Projekt Achieves Second-Best Profits Ever in 2025 as New IP "Hadar" Enters Concept Phase

CD Projekt announced its financial results for 2025, while the company looks to its future by investing in The Witcher 4, Cyberpunk 2, and "Hadar."

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