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Crimson Desert has scored a physical release with a trusted publisher, German company Plaion.
Plaion and Pearl Abyss shared the news in a press release:
PLAION is thrilled to announce its distribution partnership with Pearl Abyss for the upcoming launch of the highly anticipated new IP, Crimson Desert.
As part of this collaboration, PLAION will lead the global physical distribution of the title, leveraging its extensive international network and experienced local teams.
This partnership builds on Pearl Abyss’s strong global presence and reputation, ensuring Crimson Desert reaches players around the world with excellence.
Why Did Pearl Abyss Need Another Publisher?
Pearl Abyss famously told investors that they rejected a publishing deal from PlayStation. Since Pearl Abyss had already established themselves as a publisher in the West, they were well equipped to handle these publishing duties themselves.
They compared themselves to ShiftUp, who was shopping for a deal for their game Stellar Blade. Stellar Blade benefited from Sony’s promotion as a PlayStation exclusive and a PlayStation branded game.
But there’s a bigger potential upside for Pearl Abyss to bring their game to as many platforms as possible.
But Pearl Abyss, whose specialty has been online games, doesn’t have the experience or infrastructure to make physical releases. This was where Plaion comes in.
Plaion, originally known as Koch Media, has been doing business since all the way back in 1994. Their publishing label Deep Silver made a name for itself in the 2000s. Among the games Deep Silver was known for was Saints Row and Kingdom Come: Deliverance.
In 2022, Koch retired all their labels and rebranded themselves as Plaion. But it’s basically the same publisher, working under the Embracer Group/Fellowship Entertainment umbrella.
A Win For Physical Collectors – At Least We Hope So
This should be good news in general. Pearl Abyss told the public that Crimson Desert is a single-player offline game. There should not be any limitations from bringing it complete on physical media.
If you do collect games on Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5, you will know most AAA games are no longer ‘plug-and-play’ as they were in the past. To catch up to modern performance standards, most game discs are installers, even if they never have to go online to run.
The speeds of reading game date off of a disc is now considerably slower than running the same game off of an internal SSD. We don’t expect Crimson Desert to be any different on either console.
There were rumors that Crimson Desert is coming to Switch 2. But more recent rumors dampen our hopes that that is happening. Nintendo may deliberately be holding back third-party games on the console, at least for now.
In any case, this is only the preliminary announcement. We’ll find out the final details of Crimson Desert’s physical release sometime in the future.
