With the continuous development of technology in recent years, there has been a visible progress in the gaming world. While this enables more immersive experiences to be offered to players, it also leads to an increase in the budgets allocated for the development of games. Finally, a remarkable statement came from CD Projekt Red, the company known as the developer of games such as Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, which come to mind when it comes to “high-budget games”. This statement caused surprise among the players.
CD Projekt Red: “Our games will be ‘AAAAA’”
Ubisoft recently released Skull and Bones, which was first announced in 2017 and has been postponed several times so far. Although this piracy-themed game was generally liked, it attracted criticism for selling items, battle passes and seasonal events on top of it, despite its high price of $ 60.
As criticism increased, Ubisoft CEO described Skull and Bones as “AAAA”. In other words, he tried to say that the game is of higher quality than even games in the AAA category such as Red Dead Redemption 2, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and GTA 5. For those who don’t know, the definition of “AAA” refers to games developed by a large or medium-sized studio with a high budget. The Last of Us, Assassin’s Creed or Tomb Raider games can be given as examples for this.
Today, CD Projekt Red Chief Financial Officer Piotr Nielubowicz was asked whether CD Projekt Red will only develop “AAA” games, following the statement of Ubisoft CEO. Nielubowicz responded, “Our (games) will be AAAAA.”
This answer, given as a joke, was talked about a lot among the players. In fact, although it may be thought that this was said as a joke, CD Projekt Red seems not to be far from “AAAAAA” games.
Because it is known that the company has spent 125 million dollars so far on Cyberpunk 2077, which was released in December 2020. It is said that a budget of 21 million dollars was allocated for the expansion called Phantom Liberty. This amount is only one year’s income of some game companies. Therefore, we can say that it is quite high. In fact, for comparison, it is stated that GTA 5, one of Rockstar Games’ most popular games, cost 265 million dollars.
