With the release date for Bloober Team’s upcoming horror title Cronos: The New Dawn lining up with the highly-anticipated Team Cherry release Hollow Knight: Silksong, Bloober Team has expressed confidence in its title and choice of release date. In an interview with Polish publication PAP Business, Bloober Team CEO Piotr Babieno also spoke about how the studio doesn’t need to sell too many copies of Cronos: The New Dawn to break even, since its development budget was less than PLN 100 million (approximately $27.5 million).
“We have also noticed speculation about the cost of creating Cronos at over PLN 100 million,” said Babieno (via DeepL). “I can assure you that the development budget was certainly not that high, and even though we are counting on very good sales results, the break-even point is not as high as analysts indicate.”
“We are completely confident about the growth of investments and earnings for the company. All our analyses indicate that things will be fine, but of course we will provide information about sales levels when we reach significant milestones.”
When it comes to whether the studio is worried about having to compete against the highly-anticipated Silksong, Babieno mentioned his belief about how the audiences for Cronos: The New Dawn is different from that of Team Cherry’s upcoming release. While the former is a slow-paced survival horror game, the latter is an indie metroidvania. This, according to Babieno, made the possibility of delaying the release date of Cronos “unreasonable”. He also noted a belief that, players interested in both titles would simply buy and play both titles rather than picking only one.
“‘Hollow Knight: Silksong’ targets a completely different audience than ‘Cronos: The New Dawn’,” said Babieno. “They are mainly fans of indie games and the metroidvania genre, while we make games that are completely different. We believe that Cronos: The New Dawn is totally different from anything else on the market right now, and that’s why we think it would be unreasonable to postpone the release date in any way.”
“Paradoxically, the fact that Silksong will be released in the same week will only help us. I believe that there will be a lot of players who will play both titles, because in my opinion, each of these games reinforces the other – it’s a great week for demanding games. Of course, we are targeting a slightly different audience, but paradoxically, this will increase brand awareness.”
For some context, Cronos: The New Dawn is coming to PC, PS5 and Xbox series X/S on September 5. Hollow Knight: Silksong, on the other hand, is slated for release just a day earlier, and is coming to PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch and the Switch 2. For more details about Team Cherry’s upcoming title, here are the 15 biggest differences between Silksong and its predecessor.
For those of you looking for their next horror game fix, check out our review of Cronos: The New Dawn, where we gave it a score of 9 out of 10 and praised its story, visuals and gameplay.