Most of the staff at CD Projekt has been moved to The Witcher focus on developing The Witcher 4, as the studio gets ready to start work on the sequel.
With There are only minor updates planned for Cyberpunk 2077 after the DLC expansion Phantom Liberty, CD Projekt has now shifted the majority of its resources to The Witcher 4.
The upcoming Witcher game, codenamed Polaris, was initially announced through a logo in 2022, marking the beginning of a new trilogy of games. Not much else is known about the next game, or whether it will even be called ‘The Witcher 4’.
While the game is likely still a few years away, CD Projekt has affirmed that the title is now the main focus at the studio, with most of the staff now assigned to the sequel.
During a 2023 fiscal year earnings call, CD Projekt displayed a breakdown of its staff working on its upcoming projects – with 403 out of 627 staff working on Polaris.
The rest of the studio’s staff is focused on Cyberpunk 2077, a follow-up to Cyberpunk 2077 called Orion in the conceptual phase, a spin-off Witcher game named Project Sirius, and a new IP codenamed Hadar.
Polaris is still in the pre-production phase, but CD Projekt has confirmed that full production is set to start ‘in the second half of the year’.
The developer previously mentioned that 250 people were working on Polaris in August last year, with many team members joining the project after the release of Cyberpunk 2077 DLC expansion Phantom Liberty.
In an interview with Lega Nerd last year regarding Polaris, game director Sebastian Kalemba expressed the studio’s desire to push the boundaries of what a role-playing game can be.
‘Our priority is to attempt something that constantly exceeds expectations; we want to go further,’ he explained. ‘We aim to introduce something new compared to what we already see in RPGs. The goal is indeed to create something that surpasses the previous The Witcher and delivers a more intense experience, along with more gripping gameplay.’
CD Projekt has not provided any release date or timeframe for Polaris, and following the troubled release of Cyberpunk 2077, the studio may take as much time as necessary to avoid a similar situation.
