During their financial results today, CD Projekt Red announced that the single-player campaign from Gwent is getting spun-off into its separate retail game called Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales.
The Witcher 3 launched with an in-universe card game called Gwent, which protagonist Geralt could play against the citizenry of the Northern Kingdoms. The game was so popular that CDPR wasted no time in announcing that they were spinning the game off into its own title with a single-player experience. Now, CDPR says, that single-player experience has gotten so big that it needs to stand on its own.
The Polish developer explained that the single-player campaign will be fairly Witcher-like, with decision-making and combat, albeit of the card-based variety over thirty hours of story. You can see the original trailer for Thronebreaker from last year below.
It seems likely that this split comes from CDPR monetizing Gwent as a free-to-play card game in a similar way to Blizzard’s Hearthstone, while allowing the studio to realize the full sales potential of a big RPG campaign. Regardless, CDPR did not give a release date for their new RPG yet, but the developer rarely rushes things.
[Source: Gwent Subreddit]
Source: Game Informer Witcher Spinoff Gwent Gets Its Own Single-Player RPG Spinoff Called Thronebreaker