Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, the director of promising vampire-themed role-playing The Blood of Dawnwalker - and previously director of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - has said a delayed next-generation of consoles would be "better" for a studio like his.

Tomaszkiewicz's comments come as prices of consoles reach unprecedented levels because of component shortages resulting from generative AI datacenters hogging supplies. This is the first generation of consoles where the price of standard, base machines has risen after launch rather than fallen, and there are rumours that PlayStation 6 could cost Sony as much as $1000 to make.

Meanwhile, Xbox expects component prices to double again a year from now, and it's already warned that this could affect its next-generation console Project Helix. We've seen first-hand, too, the effect these inflated prices have had on new gaming hardware as Valve's console-like Steam Machine launched with a price significantly above what Valve had originally envisaged. Launching a new console in this environment could be a disaster.

The Blood of Dawnwalker - Official 'The Dawnwalker Saga' Trailer | IGN Summer of Gaming 2026 The tease of a serialised future for The Blood of Dawnwalker, leading all the way up to, perhaps, the modern day.Watch on YouTube

The knock-on effect is we may be looking at stretched-out console generation, as platform holders halt or suspend their plans, waiting for prices to stabilise. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. When I asked Tomazskiewicz whether it impacts Rebel Wolves and the plans it has for making The Blood of Dawnwalker a series, replied: "It doesn't at all, and to be honest, it's even better for us.

"Because when you have the game and you know the systems and the features adjusted to these particular consoles, you know what you need to do. Always, a new platform is a new challenge: you need to learn it, you need to know what are your borders, what you can do, what you cannot do. And also it's an additional build you need to create that you need to take care of later."

Consider the situation Rebel Wolves has with The Blood of Dawnwalker currently: it's creating four builds, one for Xbox Series S/X, one for PlayStation 5 and two for PC, because there are regions with different ratings restrictions which require different versions of the game. "Let's say we have four builds and later on you want to deliver a patch for the players," Tomaskiewicz said. "You need to be sure that these changes work on the Xbox, on the PlayStation, PC one and PC two."

"When you have next-gen," he added, "you're adding an additional two builds, and it multiplies the amount of work you need to do. It sounds easy but you need to know that there is a group of testers who need to test every platform separately - not only this particular change but whether the whole game has no blockers, if you can finish it from the beginning to the end, and so on and so on. It's a huge effort, to be honest, and if we work on the consoles we have right now, it's easier, because we know how many builds we have and it's easier to manage."

The Blood of Dawnwalker - Official Gameplay Deep Dive Overview Part 3 A long look at gameplay in The Blood of Dawnwalker. It's got some interesting ideas.Watch on YouTube

The Blood of Dawnwalker arrives several weeks from now, on 3rd September, so it's firmly a 'this generation' game. But Rebel Wolves has made no secret about its ambitions to create a series of games following it, underlining this point at Summer Game Fest in a trailer which showed a glimpse at a modern day setting for the game, alongside a promise that the currently medieval-set series will eventually work its way there. Incidentally, I've explored this topic more with Tomaszkiewicz and will write a separate story about it.

There will be a sequel, then, which presumably puts it in next-generation console territory. Is that something Tomaszkiewicz and Rebel Wolves would have to plan for far in advance? "It's not really impacting the design," he said. "Of course it depends what you want to do, but from my perspective, it impacts mostly visuals, because when you have stronger tech, stronger hardware, you can do more stuff more easily, because you have more RAM, you have a better processor.

"We can, for example, try to fit more animations in the game, because we thought about the systems which Unreal delivers right now, like the emotion matching, but it's quite expensive and we decided that we will not do it for this game. But for sure we'll try to do it for the next game. And if you have stronger hardware, you can show more."

There's an assumption, then, that developing for next-generation consoles presents only exciting advantages, but as Tomaszkiewicz mentioned, it's a proposition that involves updating tools to work with the new machines and all of the associated trial and error that comes with that.

Also, while you can't ignore being on a new machine because of the expectation and prestige that comes with it, when they launch they offer a very limited audience. Currently more than 90 million people own a PS5, for instance; it'll take a new console a long time to represent anything like that potential audience. Making your game cross-generational, then - and taking on all of the complications that come with that - seems to be the logical decision to make, assuming there's no lucrative exclusivity deal on offer.

The Blood of Dawnwalker is a Witcher-like dark fantasy RPG with some very interesting ideas. The obvious is the dual nature of the protagonist Coen, who's human by day and vampire by night, but there's also a freeform structure to the world and a controlled use of time, which work in concert with one another to make the experience of playing feel quite different to anything else. I'm enormously encouraged by it, as I wrote after playing The Blood of Dawnwalker recently.