Summer's almost over, which means a few things: football season is about to kick off, the TV networks are rolling out their new shows, and we can live without fear of lousy movie sequel blockbusters for another nine months. But for us, it mainly means a flood of new games on the way, and this year's crop is poised to be one of the most impressive in history, especially on the PC. To help you keep track of everything, GameSpy is kicking off this holiday weekend with a look at some of the biggest PC games coming this holiday, wrapped up with a handy calendar so you don't miss a beat.
CD Projekt RED confirms The Witcher 4, 5, and 6 will be released over a 6-year period, promising shorter development cycles ahead.
Unless these games are bite-sized, it's a disaster waiting to happen or a major over-promise. Based on the tech demo they showed off, to get anything near that fidelity, and assuming the world is larger, no way they're cranking out 3 games in 6 years, unless they have some super AI doing a ton of work.
This sounds like a good move to me; CD PROJEKT Red make the game engine once and craft the world and the full story, then for each of the next two chapters they spend two years on making the adventure. I wish Bethesda had done this with Skyrim so we had new adventures.
Remember, GTA III was released in 2001 with its sequel GTA: Vice City just one year later in 2002. And GTA: San Andreas in 2004. Same engine but tweaked for all the games and they are all time classics.
Venom, I get that, but the world of game development has changed dramatically since GTA3 and SA...these games will be extremely similar to each other, short, or downgraded quality.
But maybe CD PROJEKT Red has the secret sauce...we will see.
mods literally solve all of that, thats why skyrim sold so well for god knows how many years. You can choose to add content, change the combat up completely, get a bunch of new spells, visually change whatever parts of the world you like you name it. Especially some of the overhauls I really enjoyed
All this company does is lie.
I think their CEO might be a compulsive liar. The last interview I read of him he claimed they popularized/ created "Dark Fantasy" ignoring all super popular "Dark Fantasy" games already out.
Depends. Technically, they could spend many years on The Witcher 4, upgrading everything and polishing a new gameplay system with the story all planned out with the tools to create new content all set up.
Then release The Witcher 5 three years later. Then release Witcher 6 three years later. They would be iterative sequels.
It would be a 6 year release schedule from the perspective of a player but could be 11+ years of development. Unreal Engine 5 does also make games easier to make even if it has issues.
But even if 6 years is possible, they're probably just saying nice stuff for investors. The Witcher 3 sold for so long that sequels releasing close to each other might need even make them more money.
They could also finish The Witcher 4, and dedicate a polish/finalizing team for the last 12 months to it, while gaining an extra year towards the 5th game, and do the same for the 6th.
well they've probably set this up for a bunch of years. I would be surprised if by the time 4 releases they wouldn't already be mostly done with 5 and done a bunch of the legwork for 6 if they manage to pull this of. I'm extremely skeptical and also think they can't even be close to as large and content rich as w3.
They’re just yappin to appease investors when they will be delayed a minimum of a year and half easily or will be alot smaller and reusing assets.
There's only one studio that really gets away with this and that's RGG but it's because their stories are so good their fans don't mind exploring the Same places over and over
Can cdpr do that I doubt it
It’s easy to say that but something is going to give unless they build up their studio to several massive teams and even then delays are likely. Either that or quality/size will be lesser.
I assume this means they will build the world once and then just add story and minimal changes in the next two games.
They might have a tool to help shape landscapes and areas faster, or with AI help included.
Shorter development time doesn't always mean less changes.
Games during the 64 days were made in 2-3 years tops, and look at Mario Kart World.. that was made in 8 years and while it has a decent track selection the open mode is basically a giant desert lacking content..
Long development time doesn't always mean lots of content.
Will in be like a Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom? Not necessarily a bad thing if done right.
CD Projekt RED and the ESA got The Witcher into the stratosphere and into outer space thanks to some help from a Polish astronaut.
In honour of PlayStation's 30th birthday yesterday in the US, data company Circana has dug out figures showing the top 20 best-selling PlayStation video games ever (date-range Jan 1995 to July 2025). Don't get too excited.
This is a great reminder of how game sales have become more concentrated in a smaller number of games/series over time. In the PS1/PS2 era a game was a success if it sold a million or a few million copies. The GTA games (3/Vice City/San Andreas) were pretty big outliers in selling as much as they did during the PS2 era. So in the minds of a lot of gamers something like FF VII feels like it was as big of a PS1 game as God of War 2018 was for PS4, but in reality far fewer people bought it (though it has obviously reached additional people through remasters, etc.).
What this says to me is, not many people are buying a PS to play PS exclusives. Like so many false narratives, like Xbox gamers don't buy games! It seems Playstation as a default system is a vanilla system to play call of duty, Minecraft, GTA games and a sports games.
if you look back into the PS history, it has always been the 3rd parties who sells the most games. it was just that the PS1 and PS2 were so dominant that many of those 3rd party games were exclusives. so, back during the PS1 and PS2 days, the strategy was "to sell as many consoles as possible in order to sell more 1st party exclusives" to ride on that wave. The strategy to push many 1st party exclusives to sell consoles only started with the PS3 when many of those prior 3rd party exclusives went multiplat but more accurately, it started with the PSP.
Sony saw with the PSP, which was being trounced in sales by the DS, that 3rd party exclusives are hard to come by if you're not dominating the market. So they started building more 1st party games and when the PS3 were facing difficulties in sales, they knew they had to rely on their own to differentiate the PS3 from the 360. So the strategy back then changed to "release more 1st party exclusives in order to sell more consoles".
the only manufacturer that is still consistently selling their hardware to play 1st party exclusives, is Nintendo, and that was because they gave up the armrace for power thus they can't rely on 3rd parties anymore as all multiplats play better on competing consoles. AND that's also why they are the most ominous in going after emulators and also patent trolling!
so, you're not wrong there, but not an "aha!" moment or anything. it has been this way since the last, at least, 15 years for Playstation.
@zerobalance
So... what this tells you is that Call of duty, being the absolute check writer that it is, has been outsold by Last of us, God of war, 2 Spider man games..... Saying Playstation exclusives doesn't sell is like saying call of duty doesn't sell because they have outsold some of iterations. Does that make sense to you?
The ones that I want are also coming for PS3 and 360 and I will get the console version since my computer is really old and the only PC exclusive that I want is the Witcher and to some extent Hellgate London. (Once it was my most anticipated title but after so many delays I've kinda lost interest)