CD Projekt likes to be unusually transparent about every single project that it has in different stages of production and how far along in the process they are, but as far as a formal announcement and a proper marketing cycle are concerned, expect the studio to approach the upcoming The Witcher 4 differently from how it handled Cyberpunk 2077.
Speaking in an interview with Eurogamer, joint CEO of CD Projekt, Michał Nowakowski, talked about Cyberpunk 2077’s marketing cycle, which saw CD Projekt RED entering a prolonged final stretch of marketing with a blowout at E3 2019 with Keanu Reeves onstage, with the game’s release not coming until a year and a half later. That, incidentally, followed a trailer at E3 2018, not to mention a CGI announcement teaser all the way back in January of 2013.
With its future projects, however, the company intends to have shorter marketing cycles that last about a year, which is something that it has expressed in the past as well.
“To be honest, when we were kicking off the marketing campaign officially with pre-orders, which was the Keanu on stage [moment, at E3 in June 2019], the plan was actually to launch roughly one year later. It just didn’t really work. So we didn’t really plan for like a two-year campaign, and I still think that one year would really be fine [in terms of] time for a promotional campaign of that game.”
“[We] learned a lot of good practices from that experience: so announce the date when you’re like really, really sure of it,” he continued. “And now I think we have much better tools to be sure of that date, which we – on a smaller scale – proved to ourselves with Phantom Liberty.”
He added, “For a new game, we would still expect a slightly longer – but not two-year – lasting campaign.”
That said, even though full announcements will be made closer to release, Nowakowski says fans can still expect less formal info drops here and there, coming in the form of concept art, or even “some video assets, or something to whet the appetite of the fans”.
“Having said that, I want to stress: it doesn’t mean we would not tease or drop some cool assets before [a full reveal],” he explained. “Because the marketing campaign, slightly earlier before the launch of the game, that’s different than the actual, say, ‘mass attack’. Mass attack is when you announce the date, you start collecting the pre-orders and it really is that race from that point, that moment, to the moment you launch the game.”
“If I ask you, what do you know about The Witcher 4? The answer is not much, probably – yes, there’s theories and so on. But there’s nothing really specific,” he continued. So we want to drop the crumbs here and there so that people – and the media as well – can, you know, pick up on it and try to figure out what it is we’re trying to say this time. So that [is something] we can start doing a little bit earlier.”
CD Projekt recently announced that The Witcher 4 has entered full production, though it remains to be seen how long it’ll be before the game is ready to be shown off. As per the studio, the fantasy RPG will be bigger than The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077. Read more on that through here.
