Crimson Desert

Pearl Abyss

Pearl Abyss just released another Crimson Desert patch that allows you to ride lions and tigers, among other things, the latest in a string of additions to the game in the last two months that have wildly changed it since my pre-release review period. But at a certain point, you need to push for even more: true DLC.

Now, Pearl Abyss has spoken about that prospect during its earnings report, where it revealed the game had brought in $178.8 million. If that seems somewhat low, that’s only because that was the first few weeks of launch, and it has sold a few million more copies since. Full-year revenue is projected to be anywhere from $430-$514 million. An interesting note is that the Korean game sold 80% of its copies in North America and Europe, making it a big western hit.

Here’s what Pearl Abyss said about its future Crimson Desert plans:

“New Pipelines and Growth Strategy Crimson Desert will continue to focus on enhancing user satisfaction and driving new sales through continuous updates, while expanding its market presence through platform expansion,” Pearl Abyss said. “In addition, we are currently exploring various ways to broaden the game to the next level, including DLC. We will share the details once the concrete plans are set.”

I am genuinely wondering just what else Crimson Desert can keep adding to the game before they need to go all the way and just move on the DLC, though we do seem closer to that than ever. Previously, Pearl Abyss said that their focus would be on fixing and updating the game before heading into DLC production, and they have done a lot of fixing and updating the game in the last two months, that’s for sure.

We can go back to Black Desert Online, the Pearl Abyss MMO that Crimson Desert was once linked to, and it turns out this kind of hyper-speed development is not new for them. Black Desert Online launched its “Mediah” expansion just a month after its western launch, which included a thousand new quests and a massive map expansion. It had major updates pretty much every month through the rest of that year.

The implication here is that it is likely that we will not have to wait long, at least not compared to other games, for Crimson Desert DLC to arrive. Even if no, we’re not seeing giant expansions yet, and DLC is still being “explored,” we are clearly talking in a matter of months, not years, both given Pearl Abyss’ BDO history and the speed at which they’ve already been adding to Crimson Desert. I would expect more concrete announcements quite soon.

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