Crimson Desert reveal came way too early, Pearl Abyss says

Sky-high expectations aren't always a good thing

Fans have been waiting a long time to get their mitts on Crimson Desert, the upcoming open-world action-adventure game from South Korea-based developer Pearl Abyss. The developer first announced the project all the way back in 2019, and it was initially intended to be a prequel to the company's blockbuster MMORPG Black Desert Online, but eventually morphed into a stand-alone, single-player game. The long-simmering Crimson Desert hype grew to a fever pitch back in January, when Pearl Abyss released a 15-minute overview video of the game that drew comparisons to open-world blockbusters like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, The Witcher 3, and Skyrim. Crimson Desert will finally launch on March 19 for Mac, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X, and the developers admitted in a recent interview with IGN that the studio jumped the gun on announcing the game as early as it did.

"In a sense, we're kind of victims of ourselves – we announced the game too early, and, honestly, that's just inarguable [to dispute]. Things happened that way for multiple reasons; the game changed, and we built an engine, and not just for this game, but an additional engine altogether," Will Powers, director of marketing and PR for Pearl Abyss, told IGN. "So it's not just strictly development time for a singular title. But if we had to do it again, I don't think anyone would say we should announce the game six-and-a-half years in advance."

When a game's development takes longer than expected, potential players can vacillate between sky-high hopes, forgetting about it entirely, and skepticism about the health of the project. Powers said Pearl Abyss is eager to get the word out about the game, but trying to keep expectations in check.

"There's a balance of making sure that the awareness is out there for Crimson Desert without over hyping or setting impossible expectations to be able to hit," Powers said. "That's really where you need to achieve that balance, because you don't want to let people down at launch by making them anticipate something to such a high level – like it's the second coming. So you have to strike a balance between awareness and not over-promising."

Despite those efforts, some fans remain concerned the game won't launch in a finished state. As a recent Kotaku story points out, review codes are only available for the Windows PC version — this also happened with Cyberpunk 2077, which launched in 2020 with a batch of glowing PC reviews — only for the console ports to be so janky they were removed from digital storefronts for several months.

"We're not hiding anything," Powers replied to one X user, who claimed Pearl Abyss was "hiding console footage." Either way, we'll find out soon enough.