CD Projekt Red has officially started to focus more on the next installment of The Witcher franchise. We don’t know much about The Witcher 4 besides the fact that the game’s codename is Polaris. However, a new earnings report indicates that we are seeing hundreds of developers placed on the project going forward. The development cycle has moved on from Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, so it doesn’t seem too surprising that there is now a focus on what’s next for the studio.
Thanks to IGN, we’re finding out that The Witcher 4 has nearly 50% of CD Projekt Red’s workforce. That is quite the number, and it’s up from where the studio was previously, as the focus was still on getting the Phantom Liberty expansion out into the marketplace. While the number of developers is over 300 on the next Witcher project, it’s expected that over 400 developers will be working on Polaris by mid-2024. That’s accordion got the CEO of CD Projekt Red, Adam Kicinski.
It’s noted that there are still quite a few developers in the transition phase as well. Multiple projects are in the works, so we might not see everyone get dropped on The Witcher 4 now that Phantom Liberty has been released. After all, we know that CD Projekt Red is looking to bring out a sequel to Cyberpunk 2077. However, we don’t know what this next game will entail. That title is a mystery, just like the next installment to the The Witcher franchise. Regardless, it’s likely that we’ll see The Witcher IP make another appearance in the marketplace before Cyberpunk 2077’s sequel.
Either way, the developers are still likely learning their way around the Unreal Engine. If you don’t recall, CD Projekt Red has dropped its in-house game engine and instead will be developing under the Unreal Engine. That is why we no longer see additional big content drops for Cyberpunk 2077. The game only had one expansion release, which was Phantom Liberty. Since Cyberpunk 2077 was developed using their in-house engine, support had to be dropped from the game. In the meantime, we’ll just have to wait and see what CD Projekt Red is able to share with fans. Of course, after hyping up Cyberpunk 2077 and failing to deliver at launch, the studio will likely be hesitant to share anything too early. In fact, that Cyberpunk 2077 launch fiasco sparked a lawsuit from investors, which was only recently settled.
