CD Projekt’s deputy CEO hedges on the future of consoles
In a chat at DevGAMM in Gdańsk, Michał Nowakowski — deputy CEO at CD Projekt, the parent of CD Projekt RED (the folks behind The Witcher and Cyberpunk) — said he doesn’t expect consoles to vanish overnight, but he wouldn’t guarantee they’ll still look the same in 2036.
He framed this as an opinion rather than prophecy: consoles are stable for now, but a decade is a long time in tech. He also touched on the studio’s past rough patch after Cyberpunk 2077 and how that experience reshaped their thinking about reputation and expectations.
Why this matters: it’s not the hardware, it’s discoverability
Here’s the punchline: according to Nowakowski, whether we play on Switch, PlayStation, or Xbox might be less dramatic than the industry’s next big headache — finding players for games. More titles keep showing up, and the bigger problem is getting worthwhile games noticed.
That has real gameplay impact. Great ideas can still fail if nobody clicks play. For players it means a mess of storefront noise; for small studios it can turn original projects into commercial ghosts. The exec argues that originality still pays off, but getting that original soul in front of people is getting harder.
He encouraged developers to pick their own paths rather than chasing the blueprint of a AAA giant. Success, he said, is personal — measure it by what your team wants, not by someone else’s scoreboard.
So whether consoles morph, stick around, or get absorbed into cloud ecosystems, the immediate takeaway for gamers and devs is to watch how games are found and shared — not just what box you plug into.
